R.C. Hoerter
Torn Grocery Bag, Food Lion Parking Lot
I see you, my love, alone
at the curb’s edge, perched
shyly, brown paper fluttering
in this pedestrian breeze,
poised to take flight.
I forgive you before you think
to ask. Your modest gesture—
an outstretched, unglued handle—
incinerates my heart as only
sackcloth and ashes can do.
I only ask one thing: Lift me
above the swirling boil
of flimsy plastic skittering
across the asphalt, make small
the SUV rooftops and shopping carts.
We’ll ascend on a thousand
feathers, a surging hurricane
making ponds of parking lots,
reflective windshield glass
a silver dance of light.
You never knew your beauty
down there, beloved, but now
see with a lover’s eyes
your soaring conversion,
origami wings climbing
up and up and up,
the folded become holy,
the torn, immortal sky.
Reincarnation
A few years after the funeral,
Dad roared back as a '57 Chevy,
shifter on the steering wheel,
Space Age tail fins and curved glass.
Mom knew it was him
and she was not pleased.
Who could blame her?
Sixty years ago, she wrecked
his baby and he’d moaned
about it ever since. Now
he was back, not a bang
or a dent, gun-metal
gray a match for his hair
in later years, blame
thundering up as a coupe
with swooping lines and vacuum-
powered windshield wipers.
She wouldn’t even talk to him,
just blew town in her BMW.
“Why now?” I asked.
Did his chrome grill grin?
He opened his door
so I climbed in.
We tore outta there,
Chuck Berry turned up
loud enough to rattle
the solid steel dashboard,
cruisin’ and playin’ the radio
with no particular place to go.
R.C. Hoerter lives in Carrboro, North Carolina. His poems have previously appeared in Mid-American Review, Whiskey Tit Journal, Cacti Fur, and The Mountain anthology from Middle Creek Publishing. His MFA is from Colorado State University, where he won the AWP Intro Award.
