by JOANNE CLARKSON
I never got into that car.
Stranger in the drug store
tempting my deepest naïve.
Was I fourteen
or sixteen? Alone
or with a friend?
I was brought up on half-spoken.
What happened
to my grandmother the year she lived
with cousins in the mountains.
All the phases of hunger
and touch. The icy night hands.
My mother, widowed in her thirties.
The kindly neighbor coming to mow
the lawn. Unzipping. Forcing her
into shade, his wife two doors
away. Because of those grass stains
I never got into that car.
Although I was flattered
by his noticing
my long, copper hair. Although
charcoal pencils, a box of pastels,
and a sketch pad in the back seat.
Although I wanted to unleash my body.
Not then.
Not him.
The limbic breath
of grass clippings and small knives
of frost emboldened my No,
believing the braver story.
From Issue 7
JOANNE M. CLARKSON’s fifth poetry collection, The Fates, won the Bright Hill
Press annual contest and was published in 2017. Her poems have been published
in journals such as Nimrod, American Journal of Nursing, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry
Northwest, and Western Humanities Review. Clarkson has received an Artist Trust Grant
and an NEH grant to teach poetry in rural libraries. A registered nurse by profession,
she has specialized in home health and Hospice work. See more at www.
JoanneClarkson.com