Old Girl
R.A. Allen


Canceled sales call
one county over 
left me with time
to pay my respects.
Not only does
the train not stop
here anymore,
a marker says
they closed 
the line the year
you were born.
In the TV-repair shop's
window a poster
demands "Vote Yes!"
Maybe it advocated
pulling the plug
on the whole 
shooting match.
Like you, this
town has passed.
Its streets are full
of no one to ask.
I find the churchyard
by sighting a steeple
against a gravy
of stratocumulus.   
And there among
the statuary and 
the leaning marble
stelae you lie
limned in weeds
but still petite.
Drop a plastic primrose
and be on my way. 
You were my first.
I reckon I owed you.



 
 
 
 
 

‹About the Author: R. A. Allen's poetry has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Night Train, RHINO, Word Riot, The Recusant (UK), Gargoyle, and elsewhere. His fiction has been published in The Literary Review, The Barcelona Review, PANK, The Los Angeles Review, and Best American Mystery Stories 2010, among others. He has one Pushcart Prize nomination for poetry and one Best of the Web 2010 nomination for fiction. He lives in Memphis, where he has worked, at various times, as an aluminum-siding salesman, a die maker, a land surveyor, a hod carrier, a jeweler, a bartender, and a systems analyst. More about R. A. Allen here.

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