wooden planks splotches of grey paint i look for blades of grass in the cracks of light curious if anything grows in the dirt below underneath a family’s porch rusty bikes and worn tires cast aside a graveyard for the useless from a memory or from a movie i can’t tell only this simple truth what we don’t throw away can always be resurrected a metal chair the color of pine wrapped in its shadow gal that’s where you belong in the seat i know nothing except how to keep quiet beside me a woman in a house dress shells butter beans her profile etched by afternoon light the sun rolls past the corner beam a floodlight on the scene i see only spots of white she appears leaning against the porch railing has she been here all along? she’s older but young enough still to have dreams she begins to tell a story a message grows louder persistent underneath go on tell stories away from here i’ll never leave around me women nod one pats the arm rest the woman finishes her eyes rocks aimed at a tree
Moriah Hampton teaches in the Writing and Critical Inquiry Program at SUNY-Albany. Her fiction, poetry, photography, and photopoetry have appeared in The Coachella Review, Ponder Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Brief Wilderness, and elsewhere.
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