Sarah Sweeney
Carolina Eclogue
Even the night grew too hot
from the open window of your room
where you woke every hour, roasting
in sweat, twisting like a pig on a spit.
You discovered your body then,
held yourself through summers
bringing blood, that bare thrill igniting
evenings you’d run away, picked up
by your father who smelled of sour mash
and leather, saving you from hitchhiking
into the next county, ten dollars to your name.
You said the heat made you crazy,
the way animals turned wild, faced the sky howling
through fences―they, like you,
never slept, but roamed as you did:
ferocious and hunting, the scent of your fever
dripping from dogwood. Sometimes now
you can smell the cut grass, the honeysuckle
under greedy ropes of kudzu, remember the hot hiss
of hamburger on the grill, or your parents
not yet divorced, drunk on Sunday, dancing to Aretha
played loud through an open backdoor
as you plodded home barefoot.
Sometimes there’s not enough distance,
even when you’re gone, that a passing face
on some big city street is every man
you ever fell into: tobacco breath
and going nowhere, mosquito-bitten nude
across abandoned fields littered with bottles
and dry as the drought that threatened everything.
Sometimes it’s the mirror, the face
that so distinctly reminds you of weather, soft clay,
the voices of girls you knew
with their haystack hair and cracked, country lips.
The girls you’ll run into during trips home
cradling babies and beer in a 7-11,
girls who bring you back to restroom stalls,
confiscated notes, the backseats-of-cars gossip
and those deep, lascivious accents
you’ve struggled years to drop:
You’re just like us, and don’t pretend you ain’t.
Sarah Sweeney's writing has appeared in Quarterly West, PANK, Cream City Review, Waccamaw, The Pinch, and Barrelhouse, among others.
A native of North Carolina, she now lives and writes in Boston. Visit her at www.-sarah-sweeney.com
Return to January 2013 Edition
Even the night grew too hot
from the open window of your room
where you woke every hour, roasting
in sweat, twisting like a pig on a spit.
You discovered your body then,
held yourself through summers
bringing blood, that bare thrill igniting
evenings you’d run away, picked up
by your father who smelled of sour mash
and leather, saving you from hitchhiking
into the next county, ten dollars to your name.
You said the heat made you crazy,
the way animals turned wild, faced the sky howling
through fences―they, like you,
never slept, but roamed as you did:
ferocious and hunting, the scent of your fever
dripping from dogwood. Sometimes now
you can smell the cut grass, the honeysuckle
under greedy ropes of kudzu, remember the hot hiss
of hamburger on the grill, or your parents
not yet divorced, drunk on Sunday, dancing to Aretha
played loud through an open backdoor
as you plodded home barefoot.
Sometimes there’s not enough distance,
even when you’re gone, that a passing face
on some big city street is every man
you ever fell into: tobacco breath
and going nowhere, mosquito-bitten nude
across abandoned fields littered with bottles
and dry as the drought that threatened everything.
Sometimes it’s the mirror, the face
that so distinctly reminds you of weather, soft clay,
the voices of girls you knew
with their haystack hair and cracked, country lips.
The girls you’ll run into during trips home
cradling babies and beer in a 7-11,
girls who bring you back to restroom stalls,
confiscated notes, the backseats-of-cars gossip
and those deep, lascivious accents
you’ve struggled years to drop:
You’re just like us, and don’t pretend you ain’t.
Sarah Sweeney's writing has appeared in Quarterly West, PANK, Cream City Review, Waccamaw, The Pinch, and Barrelhouse, among others.
A native of North Carolina, she now lives and writes in Boston. Visit her at www.-sarah-sweeney.com
Return to January 2013 Edition