Poem-A-Day: A Small Hot Town by Collier Nogues

A Small Hot Town by Collier Nogues   The river its balm. I spend a lot of time   waiting in the car, nail file dust sifting onto the gearshift.   Two corner stores gone and a handle of gin under the Walk sign.   The gin drinker is uncertain he's here. He's in the war.   Wind blows a hat past the court's lawn, a balloon   from its gravesite tie. The graveyard is the town's high hill.   Salty, sure, and a thrill, at home in the hot sun with not much on.   Reaching for eggs in the dry house of hens, or reaching   into a slaughtered hen, plucking her clean-- close-mouthed,   I wouldn't say anything bad about anybody.   Then I grew into my ugly, said plenty,   dropping quarters at the coin laundry. The sound of water   turning over water was a comfort, the sound of someone   else's things. There's only one wing in our hospital.   It's sufficient. So is the one road out of the county.   You can drive your whole life into its macadam,   no matter. June crosses crosswalks in the noon air,   greasing gears so gently I can feel it   in my ears, unrelenting, busy as an army in its foxholes.                          Copyright © 2013 by Collier Nogues. Used with permission of the author.     July 5, 2013 Collier Nogues's debut collection of poems is On the Other Side, Blue (Four Way Books, 2011). She teaches at the University of California, Irvine, and resides in Long Beach, California. Related Poems Balance by Adam Zagajewski Where I Live by Maxine Kumin Winter Morning by William Jay Smith About This Poem "I grew up in a very small Texas town. Writing this poem, I tried to use clipped lines and assonance to get at how static and unbusy and circular high summer feels there. What surprises me, though, is the cynicism of the speaker, her defensive posturing against the advance of time and the world beyond the town. The poem has turned out to be about fear perhaps more than anything else."   --Collier Nogues Most Recent Book by Nogues On the Other Side, Blue (Four Way Books, 2011)     Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the  Poem-A-Day Archive.         Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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