Nicholas Molbert
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On Highway 56, the Last Thread Dangling Cocodrie Over the Gulf of Mexico
The truck wheezes and rattles
as potholes knock our knees
to our chins. It’s been years since
we’ve come back here. It looks ka-put,
like Cindy pranked the town,
a surprise 52 card pick-up then
a snarky ha-ha. The storm touched
down days ago, left a cocktail reek
of creosote, catfish carcass, and shrimp
heads, then shook off the rest over
the Midwest. The camp that crowns
our lane shrinks in the window
as we drive past, stripped
to five pilings, five tombstones
for who-knows-who, one huge hand
of five middle fingers
but it’s hard to see, to say
exactly because the truck
kicks dust so even what’s
behind us is blurry.
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What We Are Given and What We Make of It
We are given a bank of willows and white clover,
and lay there in patience’s test, as if silence
were the yardstick on which we measure our affections.
I pick one claw of clover and set it across your upper lip
where you smoosh it under-nose as makeshift mustache,
as invitation to say Stick ‘em up or spark a cackling laugh.
We are given this bank, and as the willows cast shadows
of wigs around us, I am reminded we can hold ourselves
still in places of indecision. I cannot say why I wish
the clover pillowing your head could not be my arm,
or why the honeybee blinded by the tease of clover
under your nose could not be my testing lips.
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Originally from New Iberia, Louisiana, Nicholas now lives and writes in Central Illinois. He has work published in or forthcoming from American Literary Review, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, Permafrost, and South Carolina Review among others.
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Posted in Boudin 2019: Spring Edition and tagged in