~ Delta Poetry Review ~

You Know the Story

Wayside bar, pitchers of beer,
couple lines of coke out back.
Why she come home after
all those years was never made clear.
Feet bare, voice like water pulled
from a well, mouth urgent
for the sound of her own name.

He, our beautiful loser, laid-back
and impulsive, says all the right words.
Says he wants her dirty, sweat
and grit, mind your mouth dirty.
Wants her the way a river bends.

For weeks they tangle,
far-flung, reckless.
We watch their muscles move
under tight skin, his flame,
her moist cooing.
Two names scrawled in bark,
her laughter the long shadow
that will follow him for years,
none of us sober long enough
to recognize all she was capable of.

What’s left of him quivers
in the rearview.
Tell a lie long enough,
it will become the truth.
We round our empty mouths to say it.

Flatwoods County Fair

Pine planks
and a single microphone,
she stood revealed.
hair streaked auburn and gray,
the strap of her guitar
stretched shoulder to hip,
holding her life together.
The grit of her voice
a testimony to the bite
of home stilled whiskey
and tobacco cured
in barns along the creek.
Cinnamon freckles
camouflaged the years.

We sat on fresh bales,
lassoed in summer’s heat,
our ears soaked in her sorrows –
failing crops, dying children
Peabody’s legacy to the land.

Rose and gray ridged the sky,
when skittish as a firefly
loosed from a mason jar,
she took flight.