Photo courtesy Jamie R. Mink |
Introduction by Ted Kooser: Here's a poem by Debra Nystrom about what it feels like to be a schoolgirl in rural America. No loud laughter echoing in the shopping mall for these young women. The poet lives in Virginia and this is from her book, Night Sky Frequencies, from Sheep Meadow Press.
Restless After School
Nothing to do but scuff down
the graveyard road behind the playground,
past the name-stones lined up in rows
beneath their guardian pines,
on out into the long, low waves of plains
that dissolved time. We'd angle off
from fence and telephone line, through
ribbon-grass that closed behind as though
we'd never been, and drift toward the bluff
above the river-bend where the junked pickup
moored with its load of locust-skeletons.
Stretched across the blistered hood, we let
our dresses catch the wind while clouds above
dimmed their pink to purple, then shadow-blue—
So slow, we listened to our own bones grow.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Poem copyright ©2016 by Debra Nystrom, “Restless After School,” (Night Sky
Frequencies and Selected Poems, Sheep Meadow Press, 2016). Poem reprinted
by permission of Debra Nystrom and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2016
by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as
United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress
from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.