Dawn Corrigan
On Route 65
In the Apalachicola Forest
loblolly pines nod to each other
and the sun has painted a ribbon of light
on the road’s yellow line.
It lashes at cloud and hill
and that armadillo we missed five miles back.
Light on dusty leaves
and on the stern round faces of the quartet
bunched on the shoulder: one man on a blue scooter,
another who points a shotgun north,
aiming at the woman in a bike helmet
and the man whose pant leg is stitched up.
Yellow moths with pollen-painted faces
careen over the buttercups, tumble across
the windshield like a confetti of torn-up love notes.
To combat silence
I call this Two Colors: Yellow and Green.
Or it’s called There’s One Street, and Nothing On It.
After Rain in Florida
Father’s walking stick light and frail
when I pick it up
like a movie prop
down the dirt road past loose dogs
past the “rabbits for sale” sign
at Bill and Cindy’s house
the yellowed house dissolves
in yellow porch light
that doesn’t quite touch
the rusty headboard and baseboard
at the driveway’s end
curious bookends
sentries watching
a ghostly dreamer
in a trace of bed
under live oak
singed by fireflies
dusk seeps in
cicada sings, palmetto bugs swim
my hair’s been damp
for days it seems
it clings to my skin
trees offer tissues
of moss
Alligator
A woman is walking through the woods
or The jungle, she thinks, it’s more like a jungle.
The trees are palmy, fronds poke her from all sides.
At least there’s a path.
It’s flooded and her tennis shoes
are soaked through.
She feels certain malaria
is cooking in the brown ooze
that’s stained her white shoes.
It wasn’t supposed to be so messy.
When she stopped, she thought
She’d walk among the trees
for ten minutes or so. She thought
this path would loop right back
to the car and the road.
She reaches a fork, the right time
to give up and go back the way she came,
but she’s afraid of boring
some imaginary audience.
She picks the left-hand turn.
Soon the water is even deeper than before.
She gathers her pants up like petticoats
and doesn’t lament the ruined shoes.
She’ll leave them, drive home in bare feet.
She walks into a cobweb and tries
not to scream, remembers some people
believe cobwebs bring good health.
She hopes it will somehow stay
the spread of malaria
that must be coursing through her veins.
She worries the audience is bored,
thinks I’ll take some questions now.
The first question is about love
and she feels embarrassed, thinking of love
in front of so many others.
But soon she forgets about them.
Something in the marshes
is making a noise
and she wants to know what it is.
Dawn Corrigan’s poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in The Chiron Review and online at Glitter Pony, The Smoking Poet, Feathertale, The Raging Face, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction appears regularly at The Nervous Breakdown.
