Issue 11.2 Spring 2016

cover image

 

 

Homecoming

 

Greg Geis

 

 

Maybe

she’s gone home

to see her mother.

 

Standing again

on the platform at Union Station

with a toddler in each hand,

 

clutching a battered suitcase,

waiting to board the Santa Fe

and a sleeper to Oklahoma City.

 

Earlier she tried

to pull her gown off

(a common occurrence

 

the hospice nurse

tells us),

and now lies pinned in the

 

wreckage of unsacked linen

as still and unsurprising

as a car on blocks.

 

Gown lifted,

her bruised veins mark

roads to somewhere

 

beyond the edges of most maps,

a geography as plain and simple

as a Tulsa parking lot.


With daylight leaking

through half raised blinds

and the sun throwing off its clothes

 

with all the reckless abandon

of a drunken teenager, I wonder how many lives

 

once folded in that beat up suitcase,

now being lifted by two helpful attendants

struggling to get her on board.

 

 

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