Barbara Edelman
We don't know what killed you
so we say it was the old, wild life
come knocking.
Patti, my nineteen-sixties, my freight train
howl, my cow town shit hole, my one neon
Main Street, my girls' room Kools, my smuggled
fifths, my conned hooch, my under-the-bleachers
feels, my pay phone bomb scares, my swords
into plowshares, my tear gas parades, my corn
field arrests, my weighted tongue, my words,
my fifteen, sixteen
before that, we're thirteen
in the nowhere of our bible
belt town: black sky, black
highway, black lake
my arm in arm partner
into dark water.
Copyright (c) 2004 by Barbara Edelman