Jennifer Key
Girls at the Skate Rink
Nocturne at Noon
Flip a switch and it’s midnight in Mississippi,
even at 1:20 on a Sunday afternoon,
the Lord’s Day, off the Pontotoc Highway,
past Free Will and Zion, the Tupelo Temple
of the New Testament still going strong
with the Protestant two-step, stand and sit,
this late in the day, casseroles & the sun
already cooling their heels, but here
it’s the New Testament of the New South:
Rink-a-Rama awash in stars, slow beats, no
beasts on the prowl, but teens on the make.
Constellations of the mirror ball & baby
blue lip gloss, the DJ spinning tunes in a booth
tighter than air traffic control. Groups of two French-
braid each others’ hair or sway at the rail.
A chunk of white cake balanced on a plate
takes a ride.
My daddy Alabama, momma Louisiana
Jeans precision ripped mid-thigh & air-brushed tee,
lime green laces looped around the ankle, double-
knotted: some sweet sister makes a break, lateral
step over step into the turn, past the river
of bodies afloat on a current of AC, she whips
into orbit—the moon of a major solar system
wearing shades pushed up on her crown,
like a tiara of hot pink hearts. Where
she’s bound: Tutti Frutti, Bahama Mama,
Wild Thing slushee on spin cycle at the snack shack,
but first she’s going to camel spin, iceberg,
shoot-the-duck straight across this floodplain
of stars dizzying the hardwoods. In her mind,
a trophy case of gold figurines glints mid-glide.
Let them watch, she thinks, and we do.
If I was you, I’d want to be me too
I’d want to be me too
I’d want to be me
too!
The Old Dominion
Au revoir to the fan in the barn, its
blades turning air on the
cat crouched in quiet and
dog whistles hanging from a nail, on
every dust mote floating, on
flakes of hay gone
golden in a slant of light.
Horses once tongued grooves in saltlicks. No
icepack keeps the past,
just boxwoods veiled in cobwebs,
keeping time with their glacially
lengthening roots; their green leaves
measure winter in snapped branches.
Nothing lasts
or it lasts too long:
Pastures where horses stood,
quarter horses, hock-high in spring melt or
roan woods come fall;
stalls bearing buckets of water;
the bamboo—supplicants of snow,
u-shaped, their stalks sweep the ground.
Virginia, now your monuments
will be shrouded in sackcloth, even the
X-marked spot in Chancellorsville, where
your sainted Stonewall’s arm was buried beneath
zinc advertised as white bronze.