Summer 2004

 


Summer 2004


Jeanetta L. Calhoun
MAPPING DESIRE


"i look like a roadmap," he says,
intending, i suppose, to deflect
any unrealistic expectations of
the power of passing time on
a face i haven't touched in years
but he is forgetting
how i love a road trip
sometimes screaming down the freeway
at 2 am, the bass thumping in the speakers
like the pounding of my heart
most often, though, i like to
take the side roads
roll the windows down
inhale the sweet smells
sheltered under the arching
bowers of trees linked
together like fingers of two hands
spanning what separates them
i like to slide into
a roadhouse on the county line
have a beer, some barbecue and
a slowdance to the blues
then unfold my beloved roadmap
run my finger along a chosen course
imagine all the s-turns and heaves
glory in the forgotten lanes
and remember that the end
of one journey is the
beginning of another

 
Jeanetta L. Calhoun was born in Hobart and raised in Wewoka, Oklahoma. Her family heritage reflects a typical Oklahoma-style mixture: Delaware (Lenape), Scots, German, and Irish. She is the author of Tongue Tied Woman, which won the Sarasota Poetry Theater’s 2000 Edda Poetry Chapbook Competition for Women. Her poetry has also been published in Studies in American Indian Literature, Sur le Dos de la Tortue (Lyon, France), and included in the anthologies The Colour of Resistance (Sister Vision Press) and Returning the Gift (U of Arizona).

 

 

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