Non-lieux by Erika Meitner

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 30, 2014   Non-lieux   Erika Meitner

Hand-painted on the side of a shack we pass on the road to Ohio: what this world comin to?   This is not haiku. This is more like fog and we’re socked in and your body   is invisible and right across from me simultaneously.   How much ammo you got? says one guy to another in the cola-chip aisle of the Food Lion.   The fortitude of rain hitting the roof: percussive sadness.   Almost-saved is not good enough, says the church sign. We are out of ketchup again.   Did you see what he put on Pete’s grave and what he put on Junior’s?   says the woman in the Bob Evans bath- room stall with a cane.   It was sprained, not broken. From high up, from far away.   He was still working at that bar in town, after all these years,   assigned to a circum- scribed position, like the supermoon, like employee parking.   In the dark 7-Eleven lot two officers approach a white van, flashlights on and held overhand.   The church sign says living without God is like dribbling a football.   The light—it was too bright to be captured in an iPhone photo   where people are not the urgency of the present moment.   Did you get it squared away? asks one man to another at the Starbucks condiment counter.   One of the officers has a hand on his holster.  What is he saying to the driver?   The church sign touts tonight’s sermon: Entering the Miraculous Zone.   There were no grounds for prosecution. I left before I heard the answer.            Copyright @ 2014 by Erika Meitner. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘Non-lieux’ is a phrase from the French anthropologist Marc Augé and it literally means non-places—generic places of transience that aren’t meant to hold enough significance to be regarded as actual places: airports, supermarkets, hotel rooms, train stations. Most of my life takes place in these generic spaces, and I live in a place that many people from larger cities would consider a pass-through region. I’m interested in the interactions we bear witness to in these least poetic spaces: 7-Eleven, Starbucks, Bob Evans, Food Lion.” —Erika Meitner   Erika Meitner is the author of Copia (BOA Editions, 2014). She teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Tech and lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Most Recent Book by Meitner   Copia (BOA Editions, 2014) "My Aunts" by Meghan O'Rourke "Lullaby in Blue" by Betsy Sholl "Pledge" by Elizabeth Powell 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. 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.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038