Country Song
She styles hair, does manicures too,
at Sassy Girl’s Bonbon Salon
(The Place To Go For A Killer Do),
and he drives a long-haul truck,
popping Addies to stay awake,
selling weed for an extra buck
to pay off their subprime loan
and not have their house repo’d.
“We’re screwed,” he says, “screwed to the bone.”
Then she tells him he’s her hot mess,
brushing back a wisp of his hair.
Their politics? An easy guess.
And though they get high, they somehow survive
and managed to raise three kids
(who say they’ll visit, but never arrive).
Last night she held him while he was asleep,
and heard him mutter, “not nothing will keep.”
Whoever dies first, the other will weep.
Edison Jennings is the author of two chapbooks, Reckoning (Jacar Press) and Small Measures (Wild Leek Press). A Head Start bus driver and occasional teacher living in the southern Appalachian region of Virginia, his poems have appeared in Boulevard, Kenyon Review, Poetry Daily, River Styx, Slate, Southwest Review, and TriQuarterly.
