Driving with the Dead: Poems

Index of First Lines

Index of First Lines After midnight, spotlights dimmed, 59 After they tore down my great-uncle’s store, 29 An engine block sagged the porch, 26 At art time, we crafted Christmas paper, careful-kept, 32 Beanie bears, balloons, pinwheels, 22 Behind the meat locker, crammed into a tiny office, 13 Country ham, strong coffee, 5 Diamonds and Rust undid me there on I-81, 51 Did anyone think, 54 Dust motes settle, the day works, 21 Fern’s feet do not reach the floor, 33 For weeks, we combed hillside, creek bank, 45 Four rooms and a bath clung cliff-style, 27 Home from the hospital, swaddled in her quilts, 43 I am teary this morning, not with longing, 57 I fled the cloy of candles and lilies, 49 In death, my mother will stand elbow deep, 39 66 Index of First Lines In her rented room, she makes tea on a hot plate, 37 In the half-light of winter when skies hang heavy, 58 I part the fog, a wet veil against the sun, 6 I pouted and whined the whole three hundred miles, 8 It’s the dark inside a grape, a bruise, 18 July bore down like the devil’s thumb, 11 Miles and miles and miles behind me, 7 My grandfather wore a Stetson, not the cowboy kind, 9 On Sunny View Drive, we lived, 15 She made it four miles down Highway 21, 42 Someone touched me as I dreamed, 12 Spare me the postmodern pout, 52 The little bus ate the road, rose toward the sky, 55 There are no outward signs of mayhem here, 17 There was no grave where the boy knelt, 19 The second Sunday in July marks homecoming, 3 The spring I left my husband, 44 The wind cuts, my nose drips, 48 Through indigo eyes she viewed a world of color, moved through, 23 Until she died, my grandmother scanned the highway, 47 We were to be dropped at Bible school, Mama insisted, 28 When Pap started to roam, family legend goes, 41 ...