ISSUE 15 

Melissa Shepherd

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At the Reservoir 

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Be practical, my loves.
Hurl me over
the stone wall,
dust off your palms,
and be done.

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No sense
tracking down
a rowboat
and the necessary
permits, or waiting
for cover of night.

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I don’t need ceremony.
This place is its own
gesture toward civility—
a fancy tablecloth

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of other people’s
graves, whole villages
submerged
and spun to silk.

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We always lived
outside the city limits,
where the taps
don’t flash
these smooth
siphoned minerals—

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no filter of history,
no “Former Home of”
signs except
along the highway
leading out.

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Windows Up and Fogging

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Nights in white and cherry-oak stripes.
Senior year and we only think of
how to leave the worn hills 
of our inscrutable town, its too-long
vowels, the sandy trenches
where walkways should be, the people
like castoffs from a Gatsby draft
set farther east along the blue-collar
part of the Sound. 

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I don’t know who un-clicks
the velvet rope, but then you’re in,
sliding your basketball legs
across the backseat, your hands
bracing the leather. I rub
my feet on the deep-pile carpet
and we notice how your hair
matches the interiors—
nutmeg, according to the manual,
a color no one thinks they’d like
until they do. How confident you are
for someone with acne and a cheap
plaid shirt smelling of mildew. 

 

Next year I’ll sell the Woody
for a paltry 800 bucks 
to buy a few more months at NYU 
and then I’ll leave again, 
what I’ve been taught to do— 
but you’ll be with me this time, 
and when I crash the next car 
you’ll jump in the driver’s seat 
to take the blame, and I won’t drive 
for 20 years because you get me
where I need to go. And one day 
some loudmouth at a party 
will say how all she sees 
is you in our kids, and I will stew
the whole ride home 
before I think how incredible it is
that they belong to you 
and everybody knows it, but only 
I get this vantage beside 
you, your image doubling mine.

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