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.