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Old Bardstown
Ellen Hagan
the wind whips hard electric, exhausted. its old bardstown, its country
high-way, little boys with corn colored hair, its mud-filled sundays and
saturdays, its the am and fm coming through, no tapes, no cds. just
open tar dividing trailer from beat-up truck, from doberman, from rusted up swing-set,
from me. never did tell you i drove fast to get to you, peeled wide though every
curve, my foot stayed gripped through whitney stables, american flags whipping
viciously, crooked mailboxes, white crosses dotting front lawns, jesus statues.
never did tell you i said hail mary 21 times, your name tripping space between,
past the virgin who was warning me. never did tell you i couldve loved you,
mightve, tried to, real bad. oh, i wanted to, spread all 5 fingers out on
the table next to your luke warm and weak tea. tell you my love woulda been bigger
than any river youd ever catch crawdads in. wanted to spell it out thick
and wide across from your smile, from the artichoke dip we ordered, the food neither
one of us ate, country ham, wheat bread, garden tomatoes, mayonnaise spread heavy.
i only ordered to act like there was any space next to my heart for food.
© Ellen Hagan
Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer and educator. She holds an MFA in in fiction
from The New School and has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
She has self published several chapbooks and her work can be seen in the on-line
journal La Petite Zine. She is currently working on her first novel, The
Kentucky Notes.
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