Just North of a Bend in the Arkansas River by Jeffrey Alfier

All afternoon the August heat’s a sullen drag,

a fevered flush that gathers on your shoulders

as you reach the outskirts of Van Buren.

Wildflowers spectrum the highway you hitchhiked

as if to mark the route of a homecoming parade.

Where you slip through rusted chain link,

a No Trespassing sign guards nothing but an acre

of crabgrass and bittercress. Suburban streets

and houses look like everyone here sleeps badly.

You glance sidelong at windows, their aged curtains,

till there’s something of yourself inside the rooms.

Steam blears a kitchen pane before a hand wipes it clear.

Thunder’s in the distance like kettledrums of a carnival band.

Wind hustles a shower of debris over a man sleeping

under the Sunday paper as if headlines will conceal him.

You give the slip to hustlers and come-ons that take you back

to the woman whose life you entered at a bad time.

In the windless air, smoke sleepwalks up ballfield lights

that at dusk will brush a woman, blocks away, as she hastens

behind a bedroom’s open blinds, a mother’s hand shaking a child

from a troubled dream he’ll doubt when the sun returns.

---

Jeffrey Alfier’s most recent book, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Journal & Press (2020). Journal credits include The Carolina Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Hotel Amerika, James Dickey Review, New York Quarterly, Penn Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Vassar Review. He is founder and co-editor of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review.