Rachel Marie Patterson
METAIRIE V.
The neighbors unfold metal chairs to watch
a road crew rake asphalt. All December
I can’t even bring myself to mail a letter.
I worry about the pipes, the telephone wires
too close to our heads. Mosquitoes hatch
in the empty planter behind the house, forgotten
and now too heavy to dump. A little sleep,
a little slumber, and poverty will come upon you
like a robber. Some nights I drive with my headlights
off until the last television in the city flickers out.
METAIRIE VII.
This morning it’s too cold for municipal men
to hose last night’s whiskey from the sidewalks.
The neighbors bring in their cats, then leave
bread and batteries on our porch. Our landlord
says there is not one bag of salt in the whole
green state of Louisiana. We inch our cars
into the shed. Later, planes stop flying
low over houses. We build a tiny snowman
under a shocked palmetto.
METAIRIE IX.
We know the month by the color of the sky.
White for March. Green for August when
alligators sun themselves in drainpipes and baby
pools. This morning early, we jar awake and find
the bedroom window loosed open. We wonder if
we should buy a gun. Little girls walk to mass
in wilted linen dresses, carrying their shoes.
We keep two plastic kayaks in the shed so
we can row toward the neighbors in a storm.
METAIRIE X.
Out past the causeway, whole towns have been
swallowed by cat-claw and climbing fern.
You can always be alone here with the salt-grass,
the rigs and their perfect lights. It’s quiet enough
to count the transformer towers that rise for
a hundred miles across the lake. Back in the city,
hopeless dogs run savage on the levee grass. A boy’s
body is left facedown in a drainpipe. His sister howls
as she swings his white sneakers over the wire.
Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is a Ph.D. candidate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Missouri, where she was the winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and Best New Poets. Her recent poems appear or are forthcoming in The Journal, Cimarron Review, Smartish Pace, Parcel, The Adroit Journal, Nashville Review, and others.
Return to January 2015 Edition
The neighbors unfold metal chairs to watch
a road crew rake asphalt. All December
I can’t even bring myself to mail a letter.
I worry about the pipes, the telephone wires
too close to our heads. Mosquitoes hatch
in the empty planter behind the house, forgotten
and now too heavy to dump. A little sleep,
a little slumber, and poverty will come upon you
like a robber. Some nights I drive with my headlights
off until the last television in the city flickers out.
METAIRIE VII.
This morning it’s too cold for municipal men
to hose last night’s whiskey from the sidewalks.
The neighbors bring in their cats, then leave
bread and batteries on our porch. Our landlord
says there is not one bag of salt in the whole
green state of Louisiana. We inch our cars
into the shed. Later, planes stop flying
low over houses. We build a tiny snowman
under a shocked palmetto.
METAIRIE IX.
We know the month by the color of the sky.
White for March. Green for August when
alligators sun themselves in drainpipes and baby
pools. This morning early, we jar awake and find
the bedroom window loosed open. We wonder if
we should buy a gun. Little girls walk to mass
in wilted linen dresses, carrying their shoes.
We keep two plastic kayaks in the shed so
we can row toward the neighbors in a storm.
METAIRIE X.
Out past the causeway, whole towns have been
swallowed by cat-claw and climbing fern.
You can always be alone here with the salt-grass,
the rigs and their perfect lights. It’s quiet enough
to count the transformer towers that rise for
a hundred miles across the lake. Back in the city,
hopeless dogs run savage on the levee grass. A boy’s
body is left facedown in a drainpipe. His sister howls
as she swings his white sneakers over the wire.
Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is a Ph.D. candidate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Missouri, where she was the winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and Best New Poets. Her recent poems appear or are forthcoming in The Journal, Cimarron Review, Smartish Pace, Parcel, The Adroit Journal, Nashville Review, and others.
Return to January 2015 Edition