Back to Issue 11

Karen Weyant
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Blessings from the Last Full-Service Station in Town

             With thanks to Joe Wilkins

When you come here, low fuel light flashing,
your windshield and headlights smudged with splattered gnats,

we will do more than check your oil or pump your gas.
If you are hungry, you can find cramped shelves

of sunflower seeds and potato chips, of candy bars and beef jerky.
If you are thirsty, we carry both Coke and Pepsi products,

We have coolers lined with Lipton Iced Tea. If you are tired,
we have pot-rot coffee, freshly brewed about eight hours before.

If you long for that last cigarette, the one you grounded out
twenty years ago, we have more stuffed behind the counter,

Camels, Pall Mall even Virginia Slims. If you are lost,
we may ask if you need directions and you will say yes,

there was a road out, a bridge closed, a missed turn,
when the truth is that you have gone the wrong way,

and you are not sure how it happened. We will find a map
from beneath the cash register, one creased white with wear.
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We will show you where you are now and then outline a road.
Here, we will explain, this is how you will get home.

Playing with Trains

We waited in the weeds for the gravel
to tremble, for the Black-eyed Susans to bend
in a half bow, and with the rumble,

the shake, the shrill warning whistle,
we darted in front of the locomotive,
pushing ourselves forward, leaping high,

the boys hoping to avoid a loose shoelace
caught in a splintered railroad tie,
and I, the only girl in our neighborhood pack,

trying not to get dragging dirty hemlines
snagged in a rusty spike or loose nail.
We tumbled to the other side, hands

and knees skidding through grit as sharp
as glass shards. Standing up, we raised
our fists high, clothes torn, scrapes like
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rugburns rubbed across our chins
and our cheeks. Beating death was a victory
whoop or holler lost in the loud roar,
the boxcar rattles, the thick diesel smoke.

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Karen J. Weyant's poetry and prose has been published in Briar Cliff Review, Barn Owl Review, Chautauqua, Cold Mountain Review, Copper Nickel, Poetry East, Spillway, Storm Cellar, River Styx, Waccamaw, and Whiskey Island. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Stealing Dust (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt (Winner of Main Street Rag's 2011 Chapbook Contest). She is an Associate Professor of English at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York. When she is not teaching, she explores the rural Rust Belt of northern Pennsylvania and western New York. 

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