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Melissa E. Jordan
The Sedoka Interviews: Cycle 1
“What were each of your lives like when young, in the time before you met?”
1.
light fell down in shards
on fifth-wheels under live oaks;
hanging moss cast lace shadows.
snow blurred the green bridge
stretching first across the gorge,
then clambering frozen falls.
2.
before the sun set
metal roofs at the crossroads
blazed orange, then dulled with night.
roadside trading posts,
doors stained picnic-table red,
stood behind split-rail fences.
3.
rip-rap guarded docks;
as the marsh tides rose higher,
redfish swarmed to feed on crabs.
a long wooden rack
held seven orderly rows
of fresh green Kevlar canoes.
4.
flat granite new-etched;
red and pink camellias screened
kneeling figures planting bulbs.
a three-walled cabin
braced by branching cedar logs
sheltered a fieldstone oven.
5.
the dashboard, faded
to ashes-of-roses, held
one twisted cigarette pack
bathing suits hung from
a slotted grandfather clock
standing on a cracked slate floor.
6.
a woman drove home;
opened the car door then sat,
staring at the grimed windshield.
the pine bough was breached;
the hood of the Jeep veered left
onto a road marked Private.
About the writer:
Melissa E. Jordan lives in northwestern Connecticut. Her poetry collection, Bain-Marie (Big Wonderful Press) was published in 2015. Jordan’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cossack Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Word Riot, Otis Nebula, Terrain, Off the Coast, Squawk Back, and elsewhere.
Image: Amor Nuevo by Jorge Gay (1950- ). Mural in the Mausoleum of the Lovers of Teruel, part of the San Pedro Church in Aragon, Spain. No medium specified. No size specified. 2005. By free license.
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