O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Eileen Pettycrew
BUSINESS DISTRICT
circa 1982
Praise the Cornet five-and-dime,
Rodgers variety for ribbon by the foot.
Praise the clerk with a ’50s bouffant
and red-purple hands
like my hands now.
Praise the mortuary up the street,
Direct Cremation $300
—all the days I drove by that sign.
Praise Inside Scoop, mocha fudge
ice cream. Praise Rexall Drugs,
sleepy Muzak, greeting cards
I spent too long picking out.
Praise Bits and Pieces,
warehouse slumped and slumping,
barn of curtain rods and heavy
drapes: inside that drafty heart
where I was alone.
Praise Kay’s Bar. Anchoress
of Bybee and Milwaukie,
cave of smoke
beckoning my beloved and me:
stay, stay.
Praise Cosmos and the Limelight,
2 AM drunks punching each other
past our front yard.
Praise Kentucky Fried bucket
turning on its axis, red neon
shining through our window.
O night opening up shop,
take me in, I belong here.
O bucket. Goodbye, goodbye.
About the writer:
Eileen Pettycrew’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in ONE ART, New Ohio Review, CALYX Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Cave Wall Press, SWWIM Every Day, and other journals. In 2022 she was one of two runners-up for the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry from Press 53, and a finalist for both the NORward Prize for Poetry from New Ohio Review, and the New Letters Award for Poetry. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Eileen lives in Portland, Oregon.
Image: Columbus Avenue by Roger Winter (contemporary). Oil on linen. 52 x 60 inches. 2001. By free license.
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