The boy kicking at the brick wall
can be persuaded with a King Cone.
Ask him what happens at the Sleeping
Bear dunes, which men will climb
into their cars stinking like blood.
It’s the old story again, the blonde girl
in the gingham lace-up espadrilles
dead and her Norwegian parents
tacking up the noose in the lace upstairs
window. It’s true of Traverse City,
that silence, the desperate condos
installed in the cauliflower fields’
desuetude. The Cherry Queen paraded
downtown with her lipstick smile
painted out to her earlobes. A 10-1
picked up on the radio next to the sofa
upholstered in chintz, the rolling papers,
your mother dangling the wrong
question to your telephone father
and the fingers on her throat later
in their bed. You know about this
from the camcorder in the bureau
and from the way your girlfriend
will cry in the closet later, hanging
onto a clothes-hanger with both hands
while you cut open the door with
your dad’s bowie knife. You could leave
for the city, but you won’t. Not when
the West Twin Lake brothers told you
about the headlight competition. About
how tonight the ghosts will cough too loud
and finally give themselves away.
“Common Knowledge,” Brittany Cavallaro
This is the woman who, five years ago, first told me about Interlochen, who encouraged me to apply, who told me I could write. She’s an incredible poet.
