Drunk Girls
By Rose Auslander
Driving blind in silhouette,
Denise and me,
flooring my dad’s old pick-up,
85 mph moonshine shivers —
trying not to follow
the tiny hula lady’s hips circling the windshield,
we pass plows sleeping in the tall grasses
around the old battleship grounded by the side of the road,
right before the sign that says:
“You have nothing else to do: Drink coffee!”
Which brings on the thirst again,
so we stop to sneak a bourbon by the car wash
open 24 hours.
A siren, and there it is, y’all:
Red, white, and blue
popping by — fourth of July
on wheels,
that dirty feeling
getting away with it
safe to the narrow bridge,
white, rusted
by the light of two
orange dinosaur cranes,
man toys
forgotten at the end of a shift.
Farmtown Dance
By Rose Auslander
You know
how the lamps still sway overhead
from those do si do’s at harvest time,
the whole town dancing – ten?
No thirty years ago. You and I shy in matching jeans,
by a row of swaying grandmas, in matching hairnets.
Your dad, his cowboy belt holding up his gut,
twirling your mom, reaching high to clear her beehive do.
Dancing hard enough to stomp holes in the floor,
but Lord, Lord, still lighting up that room.
Forget
the corn growing up past the stairs and
falling even farther down, lower than those
auctions come and gone, gone
your pet pigs, your daddy’s tractor, then his land,
even your sister’s dresser with the big, tall mirror
where she always looked so much prettier than me.
And you? Never did figure where you and your folks went to.
See
the old lamps still sway, even in my ninth floor office,
and the old families still dance up here on my wall,
the bowls of Jello salad jiggling impossible colors
into cracks in the ceiling, the violin praying,
the banjo straying up and down the curtains,
warping the walls, and rustling up a dance or two.
And me still back there in the corner, shuffling my feet,
wishing folks could act just a little dignified.
Black and white
in the frame, a heaping helping
of uneaten hospitality: potato salad, corn, ham.
Walk on in, load up a plate, and
cut in for a dance with a grandma or two.
Come on now – before the city lights go on.
We’ll raise our arms, let out a holler,
turn our faces up toward that old, yellowed light, and
dance our way back.
Lord, Lord, how we’ll twirl together.
Rose Auslander’s six-word memoir is “Mathematician’s daughter — has trouble counting.” She is Poetry Editor of Folded Word Press http://www.foldedword.com/folded_home.html and stays away from math. She has received a Pushcart nomination from the good folks at Literary Lunchroom and a Best of the Net nomination from Form Reborn — and she is a Regular Contributor to Referential Magazine. http://referentialmagazine.com/contributors/a-c/a/rose-auslander/ Look for “New Again” in the Dead Mule http://tinyurl.com/7e4zhws ,“From 2 Wall Street” in cur-ren-cy http://www.currencylit.com/rose-auslander , and “Des Moines” in Right Hand Pointing : http://tinyurl.com/8ywsgwr.