Her head bangs against the window
and dash when I stop and turn,
my legs too short to work
the brakes.
Mama’s crooked
brow, her makeup smearing away,
slurs something about good
ol’ boy music, a pint of Kentucky
Deluxe in her hand. Two hours,
she said, and three days later,
Tuesday, she is finally wanting
to stop. I am getting better
at the turns, guiding her
Cutlass through these hills,
ten miles an hour, gravel roads,
the Cutlass
rattling out the last
fumes of gas. Engine stops,
the night dimly lit by the moon
hung over the treetops;
owls calling each other from
hilltop to valley bend.
The radio
fades in and out of static,
tractors revving, cows lowing,
and we may never make it back,
home still five hills away, daylight
coming over rocky edges of the hills.Santee Frazier was one of my first teachers at IAIA when I was getting my MFA, and the last person I studied while finishing my thesis. In my second to last semester, I sent him a poem every morning before going to work. Just like now I would wake up early to edit my poems, having done so the previous night as well. I would go to sleep with lines in my head and wake up to lines in my head. Santee is now the director for the MFA program at IAIA following Jon Davis. I saw him recently at AWP and he has a fabulous new book out entitled, Aurum: Poems. This poem I chose for today is from his first book, Dark Thirty. I woke to a poem by him this AM, selected by Joy Harjo for poetry month. Santee is such a generous teacher, has such good instincts, and really cares about the students. I am so fortunate to have had him as a mentor.
Angie Trudell Vasquez (Mexican-American 2nd & 3rd generation Iowan) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has been published in Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, Cloudthroat, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. She has poems on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and was a Ruth Lilly fellow as an undergraduate at Drake University. Her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, was released by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She co-guest edited the Spring 2019 edition of the Yellow Medicine Review. She serves on the Wisconsin State Poet Laureate Commission, and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. On January 20, 2020 she became Madison’s newest Poet Laureate.
