Issue
#9 

a poem by John Oliver Hodges

Shell

The day I heard that Sylvia Plath's son hung himself,
I stood in line behind a girl at a Mississippi Shell,
waiting to pay for my gas.

The girl's face was freckled heavy, and she wore tight
jeans, a halter top, a white belt, and looked
like a girl I once knew, a girl whose

daddy, when she was 14, blew his heart out. Her daddy
was my friend, and at the funeral, the girl,
dressed in her best dark clothes, cried for

Jim. Somebody had placed an enormous white bible
on his chest, as if to hide the hole where his heart
once beat. A few beers were tucked in the folds

of a suit he'd never worn before, and the coffin, on chains,
was lowered into the Florida clay. My friend's
daughter then rode north with some 30-year-olds,

returned home freckled and pregnant. She was poor,
without a father. Would she, one day, jump
in front of a train? Jim was a carpenter,

and a math wizard too. He was my tutor at the lab
when I was after my degree. Now I have three,
and am writing a poem, a thing I thought

I'd never do since my mother wrote them. Have I thought
of suicide? Much. "Lemme get some bucks on
three," the freckled girl said, and slid

a ten dollar bill across the counter. She passed through
glass doors into the sunshine in the clothes of a poor
slut. They were her best clothes, I could tell,

and the older guys at the pump, waiting for her at the car,
were happy to see her.

© by John Oliver Hodges
 
Gutter Eloquence Magazine ~ Issue #9 ~ May 2010