Americana Stories: Poetry

LL BEAN BOOTS, NAVY SURPLUS PANTS,

HAIR TO MY WAIST—by Nancy L. Meyer

On Apple Valley’s long dirt road,
our geodesic dome, painted electric-blue.
We bought a beat-up hearse for a camper,
then bedded it with straw for our goose
after the fox killed his mate. Thought we hid
the pot plants between our corn stalks;
their spiky green canopied two feet taller.
Homemade root beer exploded in the pantry;
pink and blue fungus tentacled out of the root cellar.
I went to India for 6 weeks, leaving Mel
to wrestle our 4-year-old into his snowsuit
down the hill to the school bus, yellow beacon
in waist high snow. Long-haired friend, back
from Nepal, lived with us that winter, barefoot.
We built a teepee for a peyote meeting,
fed the fire, drummed and sang through the night—
first time I believed in god. Under a full moon
we rode the motorcycle, headlights off.
Startled the heifers by lying in their meadow
to look at the stars. They circled close,
black nostrils snuffing and blowing. Our heads
buzzed in the clover.

~

Nancy L. Meyer, she/her, is a 2020 Pushcart nominee, avid cyclist, and grandmother of five from San Francisco. The journals where her poetry has appeared are Black Moon Poetry, New Note, Outcast, Gyroscope, BeZine, Book of Matches, Laurel Review, Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Sugar House Review, among others. Her work was also included in eight anthologies, including by Tupelo Press, Ageless Authors, and Wising Up Press. She has work forthcoming in International Human Rights Arts Festival, DeColonial Passage, Kind of a Hurricane Press, and Frost Meadow.