By Lauren Camp
Trees gaze down through gauze of August.
I drive the thermal air on a narrow road rimmed
with orange barrels. Many dashes disappear beneath the car.
The trunk is stuffed with bags of shirts, a box
of bras, boots, 2 pair thick black slacks.
Last year’s weary garments: all folds and holes
and crossed with wrinkles. My headlights wink the road.
The radio keeps talking, disfigured into news and static.
I nod like a metronome to the ardent strokes
of a woman’s voice, the wars I don’t take time to hear.
Red-petaled bee balm—rowdy, in reunion—
form a lavish congregation at the shoulder.
Joan’s directions tighten to successive loops
beneath the waxy breeze of juniper.
She says to cross the ditch, its boundaries like syrup
from last night’s arrogant rain.
Small slaps of mud hatch the car, and in the air,
ravens scrape the sky. The glitched road opens
to an easy mark past the chicken shack.
At her house I park in sludge, lug in bags, box
and particles of storm. This trip to shop
in Joan’s backyard where clothes flop on folding tables,
posing. Look! a purple top with alabaster buttons.
To build a wardrobe from other closets,
women strip to cellulite, try on hours of adornment.
I hand a stranger a size 8 skirt. Cobalt blue!
And before long we each peel off what isn’t wearable,
toss out gifts we’ve never owned. We form a chorus—
yes or no pressed down to how to fix it.
Listen again: we rush the grass to grab at free.
We are torn, long, rolled, our footprints in Joan’s unruly ferns.
We test the length of sleeve, a back
that opens widely. Gather desire and cast it off.
In the mirror of each other, we start over, flimsy, sweaty.
Every find pushed in paper bags shoved behind geraniums.
Then, in the car, the bags, a box, new dust,
every form from someone else’s flesh, the afternoon immense
and sudden. I drive the distance between bumblebees
and mountains, the road long and slow and singing.
Lauren Camp is the author of two collections. Her third book, One Hundred Hungers, won the Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press, 2016). Her poems appear in Radar Poetry, The Seattle Review, World Literature Today, Memorious and elsewhere. Other literary honors include the Margaret Randall Poetry Prize (via The Más Tequila Review) and an Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award. Lauren hosts “Audio Saucepan”—a global music program interwoven with contemporary poetry—on Santa Fe Public Radio. www.laurencamp.com.
