PEOPLE LIKE US AND THE DAY YOU WERE BORN

by John Hodgen

Heading in to the Quickie Mart I can tell right away something’s wrong, 

the kid behind the counter with the plexi-glass wrap-around going at it  

with a customer, giving him a piece of her mind, or more. I think perhaps  

she caught him stealing, or worse, but he’s a business guy, gray suit, gray tie,  

and when I open the door it’s not anger at all, it’s passion I’m hearing,   

passion in a Quickie Mart. She’s just a kid, early 20’s or so, hair pulled back,  

masked, oversized glasses fogged up. She’s saying, …when even we can see  

what’s going on, us average people, people like us, then you know something’s wrong.  

And the man doesn’t speak, just nods and turns away, goes past me  

like a broken ghost, back to the world again. And I turn to her in this  

tiny temple where we all come and go for milk and tickets and cigarettes  

and gas, and ask her what it is that all of us should know, all us average people  

who gas and gulp and come and go. She says, …the Capitol, what those people did. 

And I tell her I agree, it’s a sacred place, that they call it the People’s House, 

that Lincoln ended slavery there with the 13^th Amendment in the Capitol,  

that when you’re actually there it feels more like a church. And then I can’t stop.  

I tell her it’s good what you did, speaking up like that. I tell her Siddhartha  

says your birthday isn’t really the day that you’re born. It’s the first time  

you stand up to your parents, to anyone with power over you, and tell them  

the truth. That’s the day when you’re truly born, when you first come alive.  

I want to say she was smiling, gleaming like a newborn held up to the light,  

but she was wearing a mask. I gave her a twenty for pump number five. 

John Hodgen, Writer-in-Residence at Assumption University, won the AWP Prize for Grace (University of Pittsburgh Press). His new book is The Lord of Everywhere (Lynx House/University of Washington Press).

INTERIOR WITH CARBON WINDOW TINT FILM FLANKED BY POWER'S INROADS

by Diane Raptosh

I'd been enjoying a duet

between the tufts

and driftless juttings

of the outer world

and a show

of images within,

waiting behind a line

of cars at the On the Fly Gas Station,

when finally it was my turn

to drift from my Corolla

and press

the levered nozzle

in its sugar hole.

I had found

beside my right

front tire, going

slightly bald, a 1978 dime,

one red plastic fork tine,

and a thinning globule

of car oil.

I had gone back,

momentarily,

to my final year

in high school

when my father was alive

and the future

floated like a set

of scare quotes.

The washing wand

worked its several rows—

sponged the windshield,

sluiced the rearview—

and I crooned some Gordon Lightfoot

in my father's honor.

When it was time

to pay, I stepped inside

the station, humming

a bar from Carefree Highway.

The TV-Adam's apple

troughed and peaked,

repeating state truths.

"True words end;

lies extend," suggested

that East African proverb

I had stored in a distant chink

in Mind's glove compartment.

I cranked up

the radio: Beyoncé's

placed on vocal rest

to mark her birthday.

Warplanes drop

chlorine bombs on Aleppo.

Today the Tao

has muscled up 35 points.

Diane Raptosh's fourth book of poetry American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press) was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award and was a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016). She teaches writing and directs the program in Criminal Justice Studies at The College of Idaho.