Hexenkopf Hill Road
Grant Clauser


They say the witch lived in a cave,
​or maybe a house that’s just a fallen cairn
of stones now fading in the twilight,
or maybe it was a Lenape girl, called Delaware,
who died with a curse on her lips
as she ran from a white hunter
right here, beer cans spilling
out of the Gremlin, where we take turns
in the driver’s seat,
a week before graduation,
no hands on the wheel, no feet on the gas,
Jim, who will die on a motorcycle
in less than a year, and Dee,
who swears her father doesn’t hit her much,
while thrilled and a little scared
we feel the car start to roll
forward, up the Hexenkopf hill,
the dirt road heading west
into the night, the last sun
setting down the hill behind us,
and we argue if the car
is being pushed or pulled,
sending us away or drawing us in.

 
 
 

About the Author:  Grant Clauser is the author of the books Necessary Myths (2013) and The Trouble with Rivers (2012). Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review and others. By day he writes about electronics, and sometimes he fishes. He blogs occasionally ​here.

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