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 shrimp³ étouffée and every day

    smokes three packs down to their mustard-colored ends.

    One night the finest woman I ever

    knew pulled a cocktail⁴ 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 slumped⁵ 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.