Greyhound
by Bill Yarrow
I'm riding on a bus sitting next to a woman eating
a yellow tomato. We both need a bath. Outside the window
is Kansas. Then Nebraska. I note that in my ratty journal,
take a banana from a paper bag, and pretend to shoot myself.
All the reading lights are out: no one can see me.
It's the chilling middle of the night. I hallucinate
my future. I'm a CPA with asthma. I'm a zoologist with
MS. I'm a baby who died of SIDS. The bus pulls into a
rest stop. I buy a grilled cheese, a vanilla shake,
some corn chowder. I covet a pearl-button denim shirt.
In the men's room, I read the offerings on the vending
machines. Two truckers come and go talking of Tupelo.
Stumbling back to my seat, I stare, out a dirty window,
into the sanitary blackness. We're 300 miles from dawn.
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Author's Note
The poem appears in WRENCH (erbacce-press, 2009) and was reprinted in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of THIS Literary Magazine.
The poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX, 2012).
Another fine piece Bill. A perfect focus on short sentences! The new group Old School might pique your interest.
Love this form, Bill. Great lines: "It's the chilling middle of the night. I hallucinate
my future. I'm a CPA with asthma. I'm a zoologist with
MS. I'm a baby who died of SIDS. The bus pulls into a
rest stop." Oh my. Good poem.
"Two truckers come and go talking of Tupelo."
heh...(!)
"We're 300 miles from dawn."
Yep.
This poem is a * for me for content, character, and conduct -- how it conducts itself through setting & landscape.
I've been asking, partly by reading at Fictionaut, about fiction writers' poetry. I know less about that than I do about poets' fiction. If this is what I think it is, it is a story writers' poem. It reads like a story, does what stories do, shows what a story shows but in lines. Narrative poetry, yes, but there's something else I'm trying to understand -- not poetry as poets' poets write it but fictioners' poetry. These are musings.
Great scene setting and characterisation, Bill. Loved this.
Fav
A whole novel in a flash--
very nice work
Neat the way the trip is also a trip in his head, and all that "sanitary blackness" between here and there.
Well done. Favorite lines: "I hallucinate my future," and "We're 300 miles from dawn."
Love the details here, so compact and full. The banana in the paper bag, two truckers talking of Tupelo, corn chowder... and that middle part, imagining your future, from CPA to dead baby. WOW, you move through a lot of territory in one small space, Bill. Love this.
Really love the attention to detail in this poem.
Two truckers come and go talking of Michaelangelo. Goes to show my puke knowledge of poetry. But I do like this, for what that's worth.
Nice work. I like the fact that he imagines things he can be, considering that no one sees him in the dark. Whimsical but structured.
Bill ... just read this, mindful of many Greyhound trips from here to there, cross country, cross state. If there was a genre, this would sit near the front of the bus. Authentic, thoughtful.
The Real made lyric without the usual song of the road stuff. The Greyhound saved from country tunes, for me,by the yellow tomato as much as the laer language, and that dawn a future and a past both.
yes, I think Jim said this well. No road romance here.
nice one.
Not exactly sure why I just found this but I'm glad I did. In the darkness of this poem, the yellow tomato and this Prufrockian (can that be a word?) line make me smile: "Two truckers come and go talking of Tupelo."
Bill, thanks for your comments on "Imperatives." I just read "Greyhound." "Two truckers come and go talking of Tupelo." such a wry play on Prufrock. And oh I've done the Greyhound thing many times. Recently 32 hours from FL to Upstate NY. In 1946 when I was seven my mother would put me alone on a Greyhound in Charleston, WVA at night to go see my father who lived in Savannah. Thrilling! "300 miles to dawn" What a strong line.
I like that all the foods mentioned are shades of yellow. Unique piece - I enjoyed reading it.
Ah, ridin' the Hound -- much more educational than being strapped in an aluminum tube, staring at the tops of clouds. I read this and MEANING OF LIFE and went directly to the Joliet Jr. College site to see if I could sign up. Outstanding work. Have you considered joining FN's 55-word (exact) Group?
wonderful brevity- glad to come upon your words
Spare, real. Fav!
This is splendid, especially the 300 miles from dawn. *