Voucher
Line for a Country Song, Best If Used Before
When there’s a ferry ride
over to Algiers for breakfast,
flat water and high sun,
I'm never quite sure
how to approach
How's it going?
There's always “Pretty good,”
but sometimes I
have to think of my oldest
son, taller than I am and already
driving, his brother much better
at getting away with things
than I ever was,
my daughter, whose every particle
keeps my mother’s memory
present.
And then my wife’s
smile when the warm coffee mug
touches her hands each day.
It makes me think
of stories my father
only told once:
Like in 1933, at six, how he had to
walk downtown one day with a voucher
stuffed in his pocket that would get his family
one cooked goose, or two live.
He couldn’t carry both birds
back home, so took off his belt,
looped it around the largest goose’s neck,
tucked the other under his arm,
and headed off. He said he sang
church songs to keep the small
goose from squirming loose, let
the big goose walk them home.
He said the next two weeks were
pretty good
getting something other than
rice every meal. And it was
really special his folks let him
name those geese.
Line for a Country Song, Best If Used Before
Belly up to a bar in the city,
an old stranger gave me
the best advice I could ever get—
Son, when your mind goes
to thinking about changing,
don’t change. Quit.
And I can remember looking down
into my glass of Bushmills
wishing I was anyplace else,
maybe even digging around
in the fridge to make you
something for breakfast.
But I knew then, and there,
once that milk turns
it never does turn back.
Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. His latest collections are Elliptic (Yellow Flag Press, 2016), Revenant (Blue Horse Press, 2016), and No Brother, This Storm (Mercer University Press, fall 2018). He has recently been appointed by Governor John Bel Edwards to serve as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.
