At Toomer’s Corner, the Morning After the Iron Bowl (2019)

In memory of Pat Sullivan

Raye Hendrix

__________

An autumn sun, expected, rises;
steals darkness from between the stars

to illuminate the streets and avenues—
College and Magnolia brilliant white

with billowing paper, a southern substitute
for snow: live oaks cloaked from trunk

to acorn, ivory drifts in dewfrost catching
light like pearls on Samford Lawn.

This softness that follows the clamor
of Saturday’s spectacle, the neon

sound so quiet now the city
seems to be holding its breath,

silent streets clinging to the ghost
of last night’s gathering—the true

and fearless faithful singing
Glory, Glory; Give ’em Hell

at the last game of the year. Soon,
city crews will come to clear

the tissue from the branches,
untangle celebration from the trees.

In the cool of Sunday morning
the rolls of streamer-snow will feather

into subtler pieces, flutter down
Auburn’s drowsy avenues, then scatter

skyward on the wind rise up as if
triumphant—as if dancing, joyful, free:

a white-winged flock of paper angels,
now having won, returning home.

__________

Friday Night Lights

__________

Day disappears behind the ridge.
The golden hour is full of smoke

from tailgates, stolen cigarettes, fathers
lighting charcoal grills in the parking lot

behind the school. Their sons-long
boys with longer shadows-march

from locker room to field,
cleats crunching the gravel path

like discordant drums of war, child
soldiers swallowed by shoulder pads,

chewing mouthguards like tobacco,
slurring words they’re too young to use

at cheerleaders too young to know why
it makes them tug at the hems

of their skirts, use their pom-poms
to shield their adolescent thighs.

They are learning to be women
from the boys who are learning

to be men by learning how to take a hit
or hit harder than their fathers.

The whistle blows; bodies collide.
The whole town begins to scream.

__________

Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama. She earned her BA and MA from Auburn University and her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Raye is the winner of the Keene Prize for Literature (2019), the Patricia Aakhus Award given by Southern Indiana Review (2018), and the New Writers Project Michael Adams Thesis Prize in Poetry, selected by Robyn Schiff (2019). In 2018, she was a finalist for the Keene Prize, the Fania Kruger Fellowship in Writing, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal’s Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize. She has also received honorable mentions for poetry from AWP’s Intro Journals Project (2015) and Southern Humanities Review’s Witness Poetry Prize honoring Jake Adam York (2014). Raye’s work has been featured on Poetry Daily and has appeared in or is forthcoming from 32 Poems, Southern Indiana Review, Shenandoah, Cimarron Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, and elsewhere. Raye is a PhD fellow at the University of Oregon studying Poetics and Crip Theory with a Deaf Studies focus.

__________

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