2 Poems by
Teresa White
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Looking For Him At Greyhound
All I see is luggage
weighting people down.
Way I figure it's as good a place
as any and he's overdue, least
by my watch even though it has a habit
of slowly losing time.
There's a whole new set of people,
twenty-somethings in shorts
and ponytails. Gets hard to tell the men
from behind. Just wish there weren't
so many wanting to go somewhere
they're not and the coffee's never good
out of the machines even if it's hot as hell
in paper cups then cools so quick
I always regret buying it.
I'm just looking for a blue-eyed man bout
thirty-three and I guess after this I'll have
an idea of where and when and I'll get to know
that soldier at every stop dragging around
a dead body in his duffel bag.
The Renegade
When Mother was excommunicated
from St. Joe's, I still believed in hell.
I walked to mass alone but Petey
would find me in my pew--
the congregation smiled to see a girl and her dog.
With the last gavel of divorce,
we moved up-country;
there was no sainted church
so I kept track of transgressions
in a school notebook.
Years and mortal sins piled up;
I began to visit hell in my dreams.
Every night I was St. Agnes walking into fire,
but fire was not enough--
I learned all the routes to death:
Salomé dancing into Herod's arms,
Tess on the gallows' deck,
and over there, Billy, bound against the sails,
looking up, expecting to see God.
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