Honky-Tonk Tankas
What is there to blame
when you outgrow roots? Can’t blame
the tin barn high school,
can’t blame the spoiled milk
from C&S, can’t blame the
gas station hunks o’ pizza
can’t blame the ticks in the outhouse
nor mud-crusted legs,
can’t blame the brown well water,
nor the scentless hunting spray.
You can climb the water
tower all you want, but you
can’t blame the bulldog
painted on its round face, can’t
blame the radio for playing
songs you learned to hate,
can’t blame the bonfire
parties, way out in the woods,
can’t blame the Mike’s Hard bottle
that chipped your big tooth, can’t
blame the rambling road to the dentist,
can’t blame him for saying
you look like a hick, you do.
What’s left to blame,
really, are the racists and abstracts:
Poverty, rurality, time.
Thousands of miles
away, you can still hear
your mother singing “Concrete
Angels” by Martina McBride.
Through the wind and the rain—
Self-Portrait with Reba McEntire Playing in the Background
When the elementary school called my mom telling her we had lice, she put all the furniture
in the yard. Peony couch busted in half from her previously pregnant belly, the rocking chair,
stuffed bunnies, all blankets. She cursed and waved at the cars passing by, the gravel dust
blocking their view of the madwoman dragging her house inside out. When the deck was
stacked against her, my momma knew to act: five heads depended on her every move. She’d
talk her way out of a speeding ticket doing 90 in a 55, get the cable company to rescind late
charges, make friends with strangers at 6am at the gas station, transform her petite body
into raw power for hugging. But when the lights went out in Missouri, there was nothing she
wouldn’t put up with. Once, she told me that her ex held her down, her daddy freshly dead,
as he spit at her “who’s going to protect you now?” She left, but not right after that. I must’ve
had my momma’s will in that suffocating apartment’s dark, Al hurling insults like it was his job.
“He’s so much like your dad,” she’d say, and I’d throw her fucked up marriages back in her face.
But she was the only person I’d call when my head surfaced out of the mist. “I love him,” I’d
say, and she’d say, “I know.” She kept her yard empty for when I was ready to let go.
CRYSTAL COX was born and raised in mid-Missouri. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sonora Review, Shō Poetry Journal, Phoebe, The Shore, Nimrod, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. With seven years of literary publishing experience, she serves as editor for Outskirts Literary Journal.
