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Turnpike // Ghost

Hala Alyan

Wrong morning, late train, I wearing red for you.

A girl-thief. Startled,

the train lurched between two smokestack towns.

The subway, eye of a concrete needle.

Orchids, purple-furred. Trashed along with the orange peels.

Tulip-wearer. I never understood Brooklyn,

how a place could be bigger than it was.

The bartenders ask if I want another before I’ve had a first.

You, frost-eyed, a lake in the pocket of your khakis. I launder,

fold the warm clothes,

find a porch inside them. You call me home. Home.

What an Oklahoman sky is made of:

arrows in red dirt, quilt in the home team’s colors.

Chimes to announce the wind.

My father wanted a suburban lawn. Warm biscuits at Red Lobster.

He knows America as equation to be memorized,

ghost + furniture + eastern turnpikes. Fog as home.

The expressway, congested with commuters,

cars that steer back the way they came. I never did learn to drive.

Even if I wanted to leave, I couldn’t.

from The Twenty-Ninth Year: Poems by Hala Alyan. Copyright © 2019 by Hala Alyan. Used by permission by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

Hala Alyan — Photo credit: Elena Mudd

Hala Alyan was born in Carbondale, Illinois. She holds a BA from the American University of Beirut, an MA from Columbia University, and a PsyD from Rutgers University. She is the author of four books of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year (Mariner Books, 2019). She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

About Hala Alyan

Themes

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