Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE BARMAID AND THE ALEXANDRITE, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: Route 66, a rut of scenery and cigarettes Last Line: From telluride, to taos, to galisteo. Subject(s): Bars & Bartenders; Stones; Travel; Pubs; Taverns; Saloons; Granite; Rocks; Journeys; Trips | ||||||||
Route 66, a rut of scenery and cigarettes - all I know of Indianapolis is a ladies' room at 3 AM. I slept with strangers. The mornings, born green, were honed down by the sun to my cigarette - one spark on the night window as the telephone pole tally ticked down to Flagstaff, a bed, a bath, a bar and there her round arms, pale, moonlit adobe dreams, passed the beers down the bar. With a smile like a torn billboard she moved through male voices from Tucumcari, to Gallup, to Flagstaff. Desert towns isolated on the land, bright and brittle, as a potato-chip bag caught on a cactus. The night slackened to a shade of New York City snow and the last pair of cowboy boots measure their metronome stride on the dew-darkened sidewalk. Stirring her coffee she talked - boardinghouses, suitcases, wild daisies wilting in a peanut-butter jar. And then she reached into her bra, undid a safety pin, and set in my hand the ring, a welt of color warm from her skin - an alexandrite, heliotrope-heavy in the half-light. Two women in the dirty-laundry dawn hunched over a stone. Silence circled from the cold desert to slither the edge of our skirts. We watched the stone waver in the mizzling sun as its color curdled to green in my hand - jelled green in the first sparrow call. I left on the bus to find my way back home - the honeycomb that fits you into all its holes - gnawed my way back through hamburgers and the anonymous arteries of America trying to read answers in road signs. And she passed out the beers wearing a stone against her breast - a dark bruise that she watched resolve again to green in every dawn from Telluride, to Taos, to Galisteo. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RICHARD, WHAT'S THAT NOISE? by RICHARD HOWARD LOOKING FOR THE GULF MOTEL by RICHARD BLANCO RIVERS INTO SEAS by LYNDA HULL DESTINATIONS by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN THE ONE WHO WAS DIFFERENT by RANDALL JARRELL THE CONFESSION OF ST. JIM-RALPH by DENIS JOHNSON SESTINA: TRAVEL NOTES by WELDON KEES TO H. B. (WITH A BOOK OF VERSE) by MAURICE BARING |
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