Red Ribbon, and: Winter Wheat, and: Cloudlight, and: The Innocent Embrace

THE TOM McAFEE DISCOVERY FEATURE Lisa Lewis Lisa Lewis is originally from Virginia, has an MFA from Iowa, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Houston. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Black Warrior, and Tendril. The Tom McAfee Discovery Feature is a continuing series to showcase the work of an outstanding young poet who has not yet published a book. The prize is funded by the family and friends of Tom McAfee. RED RIBBON / Lisa Lewis Route 11, north of Bristol, Virginia; a house trailer, two-tone, turquoise and white The city limits range like livestock Into the stands of pine hackling hillsides; Just within them a sign ringed in flashing lights Makes a pale spot in the night, like bleach Splashed on workpants. The name spelled In neon letters reads "The Red Ribbon"; The clientele comes from the coal mines, Or they're salesmen, having taken one look, relieved To be leaving in the morning. The young women Like it that way, ducking out of College Algebra, In their backpacks garter belts and back-seamed "Black Diamond" stockings, push-up bras In slither-red satin, spike heels, and corselets. They work for tips and will take MasterCard; Slow afternoons, they sit together, used to One another's undress, and discuss love, Which they believe in. One of the girls Loves a customer; thick-bodied, bellicose, Moist, dark, and married, he drops in Every Wednesday and asks for her. He's even asked to take her out, "where fucking's free," She says, but she likes it better at the Red Ribbon, Where she knows to the nickel what she's worth, And nothing else. * A tall boy with hips requests a modeling session. A twenty-dollar camera's unlocked from a bottom drawer; He has to be shown the shutter button. In the dull brown, close, trailer bedroom, A nude woman poses like a pin-up, Knees pressed together, lips pursed; The Missouri Review · 227 The young gentleman takes polaroids And lines them up on the dresser top to develop. That's all he wants—behind a black box, To let the glass eye look first. In the flashbulb's burst their faces are lost, Except for hers, on film; as if they knew one another Too well, they find the blindness exciting. Only the light makes love, unwatched, And there's no talk. He takes another twenty From his wallet; she opens her legs to the light. A hairnet of perspiration falls across her face, But even in the last shot she looks straight Into the lens, clear, persistent, still untouched, As if she could see through the cloud that floats, Purple velvet, in every direction; As if she could look past the black box The boy holds like a mask, and see through distance, Desire, ground glass, fear, the profound And soothing harmlessness. Say you're driving a loaded truck down the mountain, About to the bottom and damn glad to let off The smoking brakes and shake the hairpin turns Like hairpins holding you in place. Say it's November, and the earth is dappled, Punk wood, fungus, a hundred summers' Leaves, mahogany- and mushroom-colored. A two-lane ropes the knob; water runs the culverts From the night's rain, bubbling, stumbling On sandstone and clay, taking bits of it, Invisible, along. Among the jumble of rounded peaks, Cabins and shacks make sense; you think What it took to put them up, hewing lumber On the site so the same pine stands, not much Changed, a talisman. But on the north slope You spot a mobile home, burned long ago So the oak limbs overhanging are healed. Now you're driving faster than ever, Hurtling downhill while the trailer seems to rise, Blackened, indestructible, as if from earth. The heater's on full blast; the engine knocks 128 · The Missouri Review Lisa Lewis As you try to catch up to the trailer floating Through fall's true sienna; you think You've been driving like this for days, Pursuant, enraptured, puzzled at the impossible Placement of something so ugly it must be man's, So far gone...