#9

Audio Recording - Passenger 

Passenger*

On the road, sitting in the passenger

seat to your right, there were:

Fields of corn stalks and soybean

plants so green they hurt my eyes;

Eyes watering and swollen from a

summer season full of cottonwood

and tree pollen. 

There were:

Trees hovering over barns in the

distance, housing high-voltage

power lines, ones that you would

stand under and I would take your

picture, the buzzing sound of the

electricity enough to keep the

mosquitoes away. 

There were:

Flocks of birds diving into the

tall grass surrounding the

country road we were driving

on, a road that I was unfamiliar

with, lost, but that you said you

knew “like the back of your hand,”

something our father would say,

something he’d probably taught

you without even knowing it.

There were:

A mix of smells in the air—

Something like iodine and

maybe blood, a summer day

so hot I felt as if my skin and

bones were swelling, like the

cottonwood had gotten to them, too.

There were:

*This poem was published in Lost Coast Review, Volume 6 Number 2 (Winter 2015)