Backroad Song #66

First, know I wished for too much—

 

                   tapioca in a cracked bowl                          the shotgun seat

of an Oldsmobile                           a blues song                        Stevie Wonder

 

A train

                                       moaning in the dark                       July afternoon.

 

We speak of boxcars                      of leaving                         of the topography

                                       of this state—

 

The sky darkens                             you sigh                              I wonder what gods

                                       are these that threaten us with oncoming rain

 

I wonder                            where the rabbits on the roadside go

                    when the rain comes

 

I taste your tapioca & it has hardened

                                        tiny matte pearls. The rain comes                           turns

 

to hail                                 we sit in your car with empty space

                    between us                          endings all around us.

 

I think again                       the rabbits                        do the glass pearls

                    strike them

 

do they lie                          protected by another body

                    or comforted                                  sharp blades of sawgrass

 
 
 

Kat Neis is an undergraduate student studying at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. Her work can be found in Transcendence Magazine, White Ash Literary Magazine, and Polyphony H.S. Her poetry has won the Academy of American Poets Students Award and the Dyer-Ives Foundation Poetry Award. She is the Co-Founder of Siblíní Art and Literature Journal.