J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.

PHB

My photo
Brooklin, Maine, United States
We own a 1975 GMC Sierra Grande 15 in Maine and a 1986 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 10 in West Texas. Also a pair of 1997 Volvo 850 wagons. Average age in the fleet is 28 years--we're recycling. I've published 3 novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (2006), THE O'BRIENS (2012), and CARRY ME (2016). Also 2 short story collections: NIGHT DRIVING(1987) and TRAVELLING LIGHT (2013). More of my literary life is at www.peterbehrens.org I was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. I'm an adjunct professor at Colorado College and in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. In 2015-16 I was a Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Autoliterate office is in Car Talk Plaza in Harvard Square, 2 floors above Dewey Cheatem & Howe. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTOLITERATE DAILY EMAIL by hitting the button to the right.

Monday, March 20, 2023

Cherry-Red MG

A Cherry-Red MG Roadster on Palmerston Sq, July, 2020

In the weeks after Savannah died,

I would see things 

in their new, unholy

light, stripped, as you do —

 

here’s one, Palmerston Square

in the magic excrescence 

the snow globe of glow that remains

of a sunless July evening,

I take the alley shortcut,

its mercenary efficiency

carving through the flanks of prim 

brick, northwest toward Bathurst.

 

All the old nameless alleyways

have signposts now

like department stores.

As with affairs, being named

they end soon after.

 

In the weeks after someone dies,

you think about them all the time

in the act of not thinking about them:

I’m not going to think about it, I think,

sharply intaking the filigree light, a scalpel —

it isn’t true, I think, clocking the 

cherry-red MG, casually resplendent, in the drive —

I’m not thinking about her —

young girl practising flute in the window — 

her then-ness or or her not-ness,

jangle of hoops, tattoos and dotted cotton,

a shed snakeskin 

her summer dress unmoored.

 

The young girl mouths her flute,

the notes wet the evening air.

 

Down the street, the knife-sharpener’s bell 

warbles, nearing. 

 

                                                            -Eva H.D.


AL: Note that our cherry-red MG roadster was parked in front of Friend Memorial Library, Brooklin, Maine. Photo by Henry Behrens

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