by Martha Serpas

Sometimes it's so hot the thistle bends

to the morning dew and the limbs of trees

seem so weighted they won't hold up moss¹

anymore. The women sit and swell²

with the backwash of old family pain

and won't leave the house to walk across

the neighbor's yard. One man takes up a shotgun

over the shit hosed from a pen of dogs.

One boy takes a fist of rings and slams the face

of a kid throwing shells at his car.

That shiny car is all the love his father

has to give. And his mother cooks

the best shrimp^{3 touffe and every day}

smokes three packs down to their mustard-colored ends.

One night the finest woman I ever

knew pulled a cocktail^{4 waitress by the hair}

out of the backseat of her husband's new

Eldorado Cadillac and knocked her

down between the cars at the Queen Bee Lounge.

She drove the man slumped^{5 and snoring with his hand}

in his pants home and not a word was said.

I'll try to tell you what I know

about people who love each other

and the fear of losing that cuts a path

as wide as a tropical storm through the marsh⁶

and gets closer each year

to falling at the foot of your door.