Poem Written in an Old Halfway House Remodeled into an Artisanal Coffee Shop

By Lindsay Wilson

This year the river through the trees

has much legroom, but the ducks care nothing

of depth, or sandbags in piles by the doors,

or the old ex-cons who used to sit here watching

water slide into the Great Basin. Those men

loved words and the cigarettes you pretended

to smoke back then because of a woman.

Some days you want a story from an old man

who meant leaving when he said river,

and who believed in the currency of cigarettes.

Who could speak with authority about

all the long-necked suicides he’d cut down,

and not even try to hand you resolution.

Of course back then you were foolish

enough to still believe the world paid

its debt to you in answers. Of course

back then there was a woman who followed

you to this desert before wandering off

into the night’s dark throat. Some nights

you have to smoke meth from a light bulb

to find the right words for leaving. Some nights

you need a stranger’s hand around your neck

to understand what it means to come up for air.

Some nights you take the paper plates

they hand you for free full of simple

food at Lundsford Park because they thought

you poor, and you were too embarrassed

to say no. Oh god, where those men home

now don’t ask. Most people just die.

You were the boy who wanted an evening

story and the world handed you a plate

full of beans and bread, and a few men

to eat with beside a rising river you named,

Leaving, and once all the plates were wiped

clean, y’all grew suddenly drowsy and silent

gazing at beauty’s watered-down surface

you simply own no words for.