| | A Small Hot Town
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. |
| | | 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 by Adam Zagajewski by Maxine Kumin by William Jay Smith |
Most Recent Book by Nogues
(Four Way Books, 2011) |
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