we were driving through the oil
crisis. How long Ohio felt.
Or was it Pennsylvania? Each rest stop
a Stuckey’s after Stuckey’s. My cheek
healing unhurried from an early
summer dog bite.
At The Holiday Inn we swam
so much, the people hushed us.
Sunrise was a pillow,
mom’s fist sneaking under
my head. It was two
quarters for one canine.
By Indiana we drank
at the A&W carhop
sucking through my void
a root beer float
the last straw
between my gum and tongue.
We finally got to Champagne
to my grandparent’s
apartment. They’d given up
their house. Her piano.
Mozart’s Lacrimosa
played from a tiny music
box. On TV, in Vietnam
soldiers pushed a helicopter
off an aircraft carrier into the sea
to make room for more evacuees.
A sudden rush, swifter than a tooth
yanked by the slamming of a door.
Shana Hill’s poetry has recently appeared in Redivider, Breakwater Review, The MacGuffin, and Ocean State Review. Her poem, “Tied,” published by the museum of americana, was a 2020 Best of The Net finalist. She is a co-editor on Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (WVU Press, July 2023). Shana is a member of the Poemworks Collective of Boston and is the founder of Poetica Pastor, a business which assists writers in the publication process. Her work is forthcoming in Plume.
