Highway Fire & Other Poems by Anne Dyer Stuart

Featured in Ginosko Literary Journal #33

Highway Fire

By the time she came upon it, it had fangs and a tail, bright

horror, smoke unfurling from a brick throat,

roof already gone, men arriving in the aftermath.

Everything now for that family, after.

Life had already happened.

She was twenty and running from a drunk, two drunks,

that house full of a different smoke, brothers

she loved but couldn’t like, her desire trained

on her own bones. The car she drove would break

down but not now.    She was gone.

By the time she came upon it, neighbors stood in the yard,

secretly grateful, outwardly grieving.    This was something

they knew. And even the one across the street, indifferent,

came over in walking shoes, beige orthopedics, laceless.

She carried a certain kind of grace, her neck long.

It had cost a lot to choose what she thought had been a choice,

what burned her nervous, shed of the others and how with them

she was needed, if overlooked. She would not get out of the car

but she would think about them, paper dolls in the yard, a fragile

chain hooking them to each other, everything burning.

House Party

Thirty years later I see a girl flat

on her back, front yard of a house party,

two boys teasing with their fists.

But it was just a long line of insults

absorbed as matter-of-fact girlhood.   

I had a history

of imprisoning myself.    History

of scrutiny, witness. Large blooming

girl whose body, cooked dough,

crisps in front of everyone.    A history

of hiding when she cannot hide.

Lectures

I knew the one I refused to kiss

had a homelife only glimpsed on TV,

Daddy thin from liquor, strong fist

to his mama’s eye.    That year a priest

let my Episcopalian self confess

whatever I’d needed to, temporary

Catholic in a school of nuns.    I could feel

that boy in the room when we sat in front

of the speaker, sweaty animated

man talking sin, sin, sin.    Surely

I’ve conflated several lectures now,

but I remember a paralyzed best friend,

haunting regret, empty bottles, women

who tempt men.    How that day Mama’d dressed

me in a mini skirt, massive earrings

bought in Florida.    He’d looked at me

and I felt that boy shift in his seat

with all he knew of home.    What women

do to good men.    What women

make men do.

Sunday

Some beast takes them in its mouth overnight,

acid of strawberries in July,

hops out into moonlight, fortunate.

Apples fall early, pockmark the lawn

like a teenage face, one that will carry

these years upon it, dented. You were young

once, that threat of winter too sudden

to take seriously. You stayed in place,

and the river pulled around your cold knees,

gray ribbons between your fingers. Geese   

shot out against the sky, choreographed,

brave. A brown one walks along the bank,

and finally, you spot the problem. One wing

bent at an angle, faint moon in the sky.

Photo by Lysander Yuen on Unsplash

Varsity

Once, you were subbed into varsity last

minute and didn’t finish last. Your coach,

surprised at first, then disappointed.

You’re not supposed to have anything left.

What she didn’t know: every morning, up

at five, nine miles. Eleven after

practice, because there was no way to know

how much y’all covered around River Oaks,

your coach pushing her girls in the jogger.

Those normal bodies. You were not. So you

ran. It was a wonder you placed at all.

Heat

Under an exhausted August, sky

like a cut throat, black blood, skin exposed,

girl waits on a swing.    Desire will never

grip her this way again, out where the wind

doesn’t stir and the moon is bored.    Girl waits

in the night air thick with steam.    Hope

is a thing that will keep her here.

Photo by Cason Asher on Unsplash

Purgatory

Purge, root word

of purgatory, state

of waiting when you know

the outcome, when

a tiny sliver of yourself

hopes you’re wrong.

But, there’s so much action

in purge.    Force, decision,

wish to shed the body

of its ills.    What kind

of alchemy would it take

to make the outcome your own?

Purge, not just bulimic

urge but certainty:

what’s inside is wrong.   

Runway’s slick ribbon

of rejection.    Future

a test already failed.

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Anne Dyer Stuart    My journal publications include NELLE, Pleiades, North American Review, AGNI, The American Journal of Poetry, Raleigh Review, Cherry Tree, Sugar House Review, The Texas Review, Louisiana Literature, New World Writing Quarterly, and The Louisville Review. My work won a Henfield Prize, New South Journal's Prose Contest, was anthologized in Best of the Web, and nominated for Best New Poets. What Girls Learn, a finalist for Comstock Review's 2020 Chapbook Contest, was published by Finishing Line Press, and the title poem was featured on WPSU’s Poetry Moment, selected and read by Majorie Maddox. I edit IMPOST: A Journal of Creative and Critical Work and teach at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania-Bloomsburg.