446 Readings | 1 Rating
Fork Union, Virginia
Laying out winter clothes, leaving
cut-hay clearings, your company
divides coolly. Between this room
and pitch-pines out along barb wire,
autumn smolders—ember-dotted
cold seeps through the window unit,
cuts around the door. The town’s
academy turns boys against themselves,
closes over them from here out.
Drills with guns, firing pins removed.
Can’t find a thing to do :
walk the grassed-over drive-in show,
wait in the grocery, at the low-ceilinged
Formica pharmacy. Tired, it seems
something sicker than shame is behind
the least effort keeping the town
from saying what it wants forgotten.
A tobacco junction, a rally point
for riding to set a blaze, exhausted
clay and shanked pine dilapidations.
Free Will Baptists gather for service,
grown from a one-room church built twice
from collapse into several, their galleries
immaculate. Why do you need to stay?
The nave, sterile in sanctity, is the same
everywhere. What remains here is what
was meant to be : a place where join
two rivers, soil too rich for one person’s
needs. Your things slide in the suitcase,
loose with discarded ensembles.
You hear what you want to hear :
a thudding at the door is air, out of
balance, from the road. In a clearing,
wind drives shadow under sun—shirring
darkness over metal signs, sending ache
creaking through the skin. Your only
comfort is going from house to house—
this place handing you to some next.
Tomorrow, let some other appear.
Let them leave their mark and stay.
cut-hay clearings, your company
divides coolly. Between this room
and pitch-pines out along barb wire,
autumn smolders—ember-dotted
cold seeps through the window unit,
cuts around the door. The town’s
academy turns boys against themselves,
closes over them from here out.
Drills with guns, firing pins removed.
Can’t find a thing to do :
walk the grassed-over drive-in show,
wait in the grocery, at the low-ceilinged
Formica pharmacy. Tired, it seems
something sicker than shame is behind
the least effort keeping the town
from saying what it wants forgotten.
A tobacco junction, a rally point
for riding to set a blaze, exhausted
clay and shanked pine dilapidations.
Free Will Baptists gather for service,
grown from a one-room church built twice
from collapse into several, their galleries
immaculate. Why do you need to stay?
The nave, sterile in sanctity, is the same
everywhere. What remains here is what
was meant to be : a place where join
two rivers, soil too rich for one person’s
needs. Your things slide in the suitcase,
loose with discarded ensembles.
You hear what you want to hear :
a thudding at the door is air, out of
balance, from the road. In a clearing,
wind drives shadow under sun—shirring
darkness over metal signs, sending ache
creaking through the skin. Your only
comfort is going from house to house—
this place handing you to some next.
Tomorrow, let some other appear.
Let them leave their mark and stay.
Posted 12/11/09
Comments (1)
|
Would you like to leave a comment about this piece? Join Ink Node for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.
|
|
|
|
See American Letters & Commentary, number 20.
|
04/25/11 1:23am
|
|