Julie Enszer



IN TEXAS

I am being driven ninety miles an hour from College Station
to Austin on a twisted, two-lane highway. It's pitch black outside.

We drive, and we drive. Then we smell hay.
I don't recognize it, but my travel companions tell me: hay.

They harvest memories from their baling childhoods.
It makes me think of pine and cedar in northern Michigan:

how they smell in August at dusk and dawn
when it is so cold, I need a sweater, and summer days are numbered

when every September brings me closer.
I am lonely. I smell hay. I think of you.

Julie R. Enszer is a writer and lesbian activist living in Maryland. She has previously been published in Iris: A Journal About Women, Room of One's Own, Long Shot, the Web Del Sol Review, and the Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly. Her work is forthcoming in Red Mountain Review and McSweeney's. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.








                                    

 

Home
Current Issue
Submissions
Contributors' Notes


Email this poem Printer friendly page

Deborah Ager

Karren Alenier

John Allman

Anne Becker

Mel Belin

Bruce Bennett

Doraine Bennett

Cliff Bernier

Doris Brody

Trina Carter

Grace Cavalieri

Norma Chapman

Maritza Rivera Cohen

Yoko Danno

Barbara DeCesare

Donna Denizé

Julie Enszer

Colin Flanigan

Roger Fogelman

Martin Galvin

Barbara Goldberg

JoAnne Growney

Sarita Hartz

James C. Hopkins

John Hoppenthaler

Laurie Hurvitz

Donald Illich

W. Luther Jett

J. Ladin

Diane Lockward

Jason Maffettone

Judith McCombs

Louis McKee

Larry Moffi

Miles David Moore

Yvette Neisser

Brent Pallas

Lee Patton

Hilary Tham

Rosemary Winslow

Kathi Wolfe

Ernie Wormwood

More

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 


Last Updated: Feb 22, 2020 - 12:30:13 PM

Copyright 2005 - 2020 Cook Communication.