Susan Goslee
WELCOME TO KINGDOM CITY
Ligertown
Idaho, 1995
You go to stand up, but then you’re caught
by something that’s on you. You sit right back
down, surprised. Stupid bathrobe. Lava Hot
Springs, Idaho, night: a woman walks back
to her truck from milking her goats. Her slippers
and the recliner sound good. What’s flattening
out the loose gravel? Nothing. Missouri
Day’s Inn clerk says that she likes being friendly
but then guys hang out, crank the Fruit Loops,
ask if she wants to go swimming. At least
it’s lightning, I say and take my receipt.
The car’s tucked right up to my door. Vending
machines hum to themselves. The motel key
ring has a hunter-orange plastic ellipse:
Nice for when I compulsively check my coat
pocket. To dump the coolers—only a step
outside. A long car trip feels like it makes
you different. Is this what it’s like to elope?
The Idaho woman’s nephew wants to do magic tricks
for his birthday party. She must choose a card
again and again. Her goats are restless.
Behind the motel, I-70’s quieter.
I stand at the edge of mown grass. Last spring
in Pocatello, guys poached otter
and beaver from the city greenway. Spring
traps swung over their shoulders, they’d pass
retirees on the river path. Sloping
banks under dead wood made good spots. The Russian
olive tree, an invasive species, follows
the trail. You’d better get your dog on leash,
somebody told me. Now the dog’s almost
disappeared in the high brush. The leash weaves
back and forth. The woman lives outside of town.
Surprise spreads its jaws flat to the dirt. Please
take a step, any step. The leash stops stitching.
Dog’s ears skyrocket. I look up. The woman keeps
checking behind her. Stops on long road trips
feel separate from normal time. It’s a young
deer, unworried. I watch it graze then stroll
beneath the power tower. Light, hungover,
throws its last dollars at white sheets of Queen
Anne’s Lace and the deer’s hard-sugar fur.
Dog returns to its study of Dairy Queen
napkins and cigarette butts. Light loses
everything. The woman’s flashlight is back in
the little shed near the goats. Surprise longs,
like an untrained pup, to leap to your face.
Who will pull in next to me and how long
will they stay? She hides behind a telephone
pole. Their lights will sweep across the lopsided
yard and shine directly on a certain door.
Her neighbor’s Ford swings up the drive. I flip
the lock and pull down the covers. His high
beams capture the cat, taller than the truck’s hood,
standing smack in the road’s poor center. Something
unsnaps Surprise’s leash. It stares for just a pulse.
Then. The woman is shown a sharp prize.
What room? What gold number did you pull?
Elegy
Ligertown
Idaho, 1995
A handful of flash-bangs scared the mule off.
There was one lion, mother-raised, he got lost.
Champagne glasses are used for water.
Birthday candles are used for light.
Turmeric is used straight for stain.
Wedding clothes are made to bandages, pallets.
The dogs sleep in an open suitcase;
sweet lion is gone. Though before this poem,
he was a man I put in a lion suit—
the long zipper up the back played possum
beneath the golden fur, but when I leaned in,
easy to tell his same purry grumble, psalm
of his roar. Please read it to me again.
Paws can’t even fumble with a trigger
so I’ll take the rifle and use heaven
for Scotch-tape, this is back even further,
to stick cut-out snowflakes on the window.
On Saturdays, his parents pulled curtains
wide open until the plate glass flopped out
to a lake near the Smokies his sister
and I skated around and around,
talking nonstop. Even if he resists,
we will stash him in the snow-day couch fort
for safe keeping. We will keep on disguising
him. Something else will have to make do. For
he was not bottle fed. For his dad would’ve
offered himself instead. Sister would forgive
whatever imaginary debt he vowed
was tangled all about his head; I’ll round it
up to mane. We would cut him free. To no end.
But he’s found. We’re caught on this earth. He’s found.