Erasure: after Angele Ellis, “A Man in a Truck by a River.”
Grasslimb vol. 13, No. 1, 2015
It took forever to reach you so much mud. I picked my way
like a lost shorebird among
used rubbers, gnawed chicken bones.
I sort of knew you
a guy with strong muscles who got paid in cash.
You climbed into your dirt-brown Bronco
and flipped the passenger door lock.
My clumsy entrance
knocked your wallet onto the floor mat. It fell open—
photo of you with a woman on your lap.
You
were grinning as if celebrating a winning
a scratch-off Lotto card?
Her Pirates baseball jersey,
clung to her cantaloupe breasts.
I ran my hand down
your thigh like an apology.
Later, I realized that every time
you left me, you put your truck
in gear and went to her
that the baby
crying in the background every time I called was yours.
Later, I realized that even
the pieces of trash that end up on the shore
are part of someone’s fantasies.
Night after night, I’m in the cauliflower beds
on my friend’s farm rows of heads, leaves secured
with a clothespin, the kind with teeth.
I panic, seeing the vegetables as the diapered rumps of babies.
——————–
Jeanine Stevens is the author of Limberlost and Inheritor (Future Cycle Press) and Sailing on Milkweed (Cherry Grove Collections). Her latest chapbook, Citadels, was published by Folded Word Press, 2019. Winner of the MacGuffin Poet Hunt, The Ekphrasis Prize, Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference, and WOMR Cape Cod Community Radio National Poetry Award. Jeanine studied poetry at U.C. Davis and California State University, Sacramento. Poems have been published in Evansville Review, Forge, Chiron Review, Pearl, Stoneboat, Connecticut River Review, Verse Wisconsin, The Curator and North Dakota Quarterly. She also enjoys Romanian folk dance and working with collage. Jeanine is Professor Emerita at American River College having taught Anthropology, Psychology and Women’s Studies for thirty two years.
Sunday, November 3rd, 2019 1:40 pm
Categories: Archives, Issue 13.1, Poetry
