SMALLEST TOWN
By Jennifer Olds
Sundown is a four-letter word
when I'm alone with cigarettes
and simple songs,
watching human picture shows
unravel in the street.
And they go down the walkways
of this pretty city,
all their hair done up in trashy bows.
And they slip down dimly lit corridors
until there's nothing more to see.
Where you come from?
Where you come from, boy?
This is the anthem
of the smallest town I know,
where the trees leaned toward the desert,
immutable as us.
Where we tussled would-be lovers
in the family's foaling barn,
and showed each other parts of hearts
and the sliver of a dream.
I spent sixteen years just getting through
the things that must get done;
and on solitary weekend nights
got loaded on a pack of six,
smoking filter cigarettes,
and speeding up to red lights
just to keep from blowing.
He could come around,
he could come around if he would.
But, he's the sort
who leaves again and again
until he's the hollow repetition
of everything he's ever done.
It's bad when I'm not drinking anymore.
Worse than when I've started up again.
Smallest town,
my father humming reville
as he packed his tackle box
with bobs and string.
Smallest town,
as we dropped beer into the ice
each one became the face of those
I'd never see again.
There was a taunt we tossed
at strangers passing through:
Where you come from?
Where you come from, boy?
He could come around,
he could come around if he would,
but there ain't a lover coming
to give old Sisyphus a rest.
Here I go,
riding up and down,
nudging a rock ahead of me like a seal.
Here I go in suspended animation
on a film student's show-off reel.
I can't dance and he don't love me.
I can't dance and he don't want me near
in pretty city.
CULLING THE HERD
By Jennifer Olds
When the new chick flopped
wretched from its shell
(hatched without skin
or the possibility of feathers),
its hen kicked it
to the center of the yard,
plucked at its eyes
and the pecking began.
In the barn, a slant-eyed cat
queened an odd one out,
winkled it from the others
and ate it.
That is how a herd is culled;
the pure and impure separated
to live or die,
each according to its form.
Still, there are exceptions.
The bay mare who dropped
a blind foal and,
not knowing the flaw,
understood that there was one
and bared her teeth
to chase off the herd
then used those molars
to grip its neck
and guide it to her side.
In my own house
a boy child was born
without speech or sound and,
in a hellish lurch,
I recalled the culling
then shoved it off,
rubbed his poor dead ears
and bundled him close
and nursed him.
THE LITTLE DEATH
By Jennifer Olds
My love, he drinks red
wine, he drinks bourbon
all the time. He reaches
across the narrow bed,
his hands shake like his
drunk head; full of fumes
and curls and the bobbing
blow-ups of nude girls.
None of them are me.
None will ever be.
I was a mean vindictive
child. A bully thief. Wild.
I rode a half-blind crazy
horse with a whip hand
and muffled curse. Bad
things will follow me
wherever I go. Bad things
will swallow me. Whole.