Issue Thirty-Nine - Winter 2022

Above Your Station

By Mercedes Lawry

Forget the trick of shading your eyes,
giving a half-whistle over your shoulder,
tilting your head a few inches to the left.
You will not be mentioned, not among
the fat and groaning with jewels,
the slick and restless with their top shelf finery,
the old money and the new money.
You won’t be seen, noticed, cared for, cosseted.
You won’t be breaking through fences,
rising up through the glitter of broken glass,
invited to a Candyland in the desert,
a chalet, a beach paradise, a Tuscan villa.
You’ll be down in the dirt with the creatures
that crawl, burrowing under bushes, nesting
near roots, glad of the cool shade from
a licorice fern, of a stripe of sun between
stalwart Douglas firs.

Copyright Lawry 2022

Mercedes Lawry has had poems published in such journals as Poetry, Natural Bridge, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner as well as SHARK REEF. She's published two chapbooks - “There are Crows in My Blood” and “Happy Darkness.” She was a finalist for the 2017 Airlie Press Prize and the 2017 Wheelbarrow Book Prize and has received the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Prize from Twelve Winters Press. Lawry has received honors from the Seattle Arts Commission, Jack Straw Foundation, Artist Trust and Richard Hugo House, been a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and held a residency at Hedgebrook. She's also published short fiction as well as stories and poems for children.

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