Read More: A Q&A with Roxanne Doty
Midnight at A Truck Stop in Terre Haute, Indiana
parking lot packed with semis
all-night café lit in neon
country music on an outdoor speaker
we drove 500 hundred miles that day
tried to make 800 to Kansas City
save the cost of a motel
mom said a truck stop was the safest
place to spend the night
we called it our vacation
long inviting highways
an eternity of white lines
swimming pool at Howard Johnsons
dingy motor lodge in Wheeling, West Virginia
we knew it wasn’t a vacation
we were running away
Tammy Wynette’s Stand by your Man played
as I drifted off to sleep in the back seat,
you’ll have bad times and he’ll have good times
doing things that you don’t understand,
hot humid air drifted through the windows
I was twelve years old
even back then that song disturbed me
Superman
He likes to stop at a bar
on the lower east side of Manhattan
before we head home
I’ll be right back, he says
as he parks the car.
Keep the doors locked.
And he disappears
around the corner.
I imagine Clark Kent
changing into Superman,
off to rescue someone
in this place we call the city.
I check the locks, a light drizzle
taps steady on the roof
windows fog, the newspaper stand
closes and the street is silent.
I imagine Lois Lane
sitting next to my father in the bar
looking at him as if she suspects
he might not be who he appears to be.
He returns to the car. Ready?
He says as if he’s been waiting
for me in the cold damp.
He places his pipe in the ashtray
turns around and flashes a quick smile
the grainy smell of beer on his breath,
then a blur of headlights, tail lights
streetlights. Superman flies
over us as approach the Midtown tunnel.
Fountain Pen
A young girl notices the fountain pen laying on a Formica kitchen table next to a metal ashtray encrusted with old ashes, cigarette butts piled high, an open pack of low-tar Carletons a few inches away. Scraps of paper with numbers scrawled on them are scattered about the table. The dad is always calculating how he will pay bills connected to the little house no one loves. Cold rooms and slamming doors have carved invisible scars on each member of the failing family as fissures form in their American dream. The pen gleams like a jewel, its nib sharp as the tip of a knife – or a syringe for drawing blood. The girl wants the pen. It seems that it should be hers. It is not meant to scribble numbers on pieces of paper, total up the rent and utility bills, grocery bills, credit card bills, figure how much will be left from the dad’s paycheck for beer and cigarettes. These things insult the very nature of the pen, what it is meant to be and do. She picks it up, presses the nib to her palm and watches the dark ink flow into her skin. She believes she has the right to take it. But, the dad will notice if it is gone. Even if he doesn’t say anything to anyone, he will slur words to himself about it at the Formica table later that night or the next night after he comes home from Sam’s bar and he will blame the close-to-breaking mom for the missing fountain pen and that will be a whole other thing to worry about. So, the young girl doesn’t take it. She puts the cap back on and lays the pen next the ashtray. But, it is already ingrained on her psyche. The fountain pen is the thing she will need to;
write past this moment
name the unnamable
explore the contours
confront the scars,
the hauntings
the hungers
the abyss of emotions
the words
all of which are a frozen sea inside her young body. The young girl doesn’t know all of this as she walks away from the fountain pen on the Formica table. She just knows that it is beautiful and that she wants it very badly.
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Roxanne Doty is a writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She grew up in Huntington, New York, Kansas City, Missouri and Nashville, Tennessee. She is the author of the novel, Out Stealing Water (Regal House Publishing, 2022) and the poetry chapbook, Hours of the Desert (Kelsay Books, 2024). Her poetry collection, What Surrounds You, will be published by Kelsay Books in 2026. Her poems have appeared in various journals including, Gyroscope Review, Amethyst Review ,Cloudbank, Ocotillo Review, The Baltimore Review, Third Wednesday, New Verse News, The Orchard Poetry Review, Lascaux Review and San Pedro River Review. She currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
Read More: A Q&A with Roxanne Doty