Alone in the baseball field back of the farrier’s barn,
I think of the wives in cotton dresses the color
of oil soap, their husbands kneading
the counter down the hill at the Rusty Sprocket.
In one yellow yard, a pool of rainwater
has gathered at the center of an abandoned mattress
where someone's weight lulled the springs.
The grocery store begins to glow like a fish tank
after dark. The sawmill workers buy strawberry pop
to sweeten their whiskey, sometimes stand awhile
in the parking lot and watch the lumber trucks pull
through the slow air on their way
to Roseburg.
Downtown, there is a junkyard
fragrant with wild roses. A boy and a girl
have fallen asleep in a dry bathtub,
and are both dreaming of the white moon.
Natalie, your brilliance, as always, astounds me.
ReplyDeleteThe images in this piece are very clear and almost... Well, the best term I can think of is haunting, though I'm not sure that's quite right.
My only thought on the improvement of this piece is that it feels a little disjointed (though maybe that's the intention here... I never seem to know these things). I feel like your main voice, your "I", kind of disappears and I want to know more about them. Perhaps not, but I just felt as if there was something more to this and then you took it out.
Favorite Images/ Lines:
-Rusty Sprocket (great name)
-Cotton dresses the color of oil soap
-The entire second paragraph and,
-A boy and a girl
have fallen asleep in a dry bathtub,
and are both dreaming of the white moon.
All right, thanks for the feedback! I think you're right now that I read it over again.... It's missing something. Hrrrm....
ReplyDelete