Another Kind of Prospering by Martha Christina

Up from New Orleans
to New England,
Rosa held fast to
southern traditions,
named her three
table restaurant
“Lagniappe,” and
served an extra
beignet or wedge
of cornbread to
all her customers:
no extra charge.

I’d like to say
her little restaurant
prospered with
a steady stream
of locals and tourists,
but it lasted only
one season. Rosa
and her new hire
(a woman who’d
never been out
of Massachusetts)
closed up, settled
their debts and
themselves, newly-
wed in New Orleans.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in the anthology Ice Cream Poems from World Enough Writers. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).