All summer I tossed wheels of dough
into a sea of grease, where they browned
and crisped while I smoked half
a cigarette. By the time the owner
stopped by, the air would be humid
with sugar, the bakery cases filled with rows
of doughnuts I’d frosted and sprinkled.
He’d pull a buck from his wallet to pay
for his cruller, his cup of coffee, and show me
the photo of his son squinting into the light,
smiling like a man who didn’t know
he would die at Khe Sanh.

On my last day the boss pressed
a wad of bills into my hand and kissed me
goodbye. When he slipped
his tongue into my mouth,
I could feel the old dog
of his heart rear up and tug
at its leash. His breath tasted
like ashes. He was my father’s friend.
I was sixteen and didn’t understand
yet how life can kill you a little
at a time. Still, I kissed him back.

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Brevity, Barn Owl Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Woman, Third Coast, Tar River Poetry, and Painted Bride Quarterly and on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and an Artist’s Exchange grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. She is a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

Summer before last I parked cars at
the country club—high-class rides with seats
softer than a baby’s face, as wide as beds.
Men in white dinner jackets dropped tips
in my palm, told me to watch myself
with their brand new Caddies or else.
My boss called me kid if we weren’t busy,
hey assface when we were, threw rings of keys
at me. I used to pretend those cars were mine
and the world was my kingdom: the dimes
riding heavy in my pocket, the wives
who smelled of smoke and roses, the chime
of ice against glass, the sprinklers tossing
silvery coins of water to the grateful grass.

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Brevity, Barn Owl Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Woman, Third Coast, Tar River Poetry, and Painted Bride Quarterly and on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and an Artist’s Exchange grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. She is a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Brevity, Barn Owl Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Woman, Third Coast, Tar River Poetry, and Painted Bride Quarterly and on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and an Artist’s Exchange grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. She is a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

Your father drives silent and one-handed, crooked left elbow riding on
the window’s rim. Your mother picks skin from her cuticles. You and
your sister sprawl in the back seat like badly packed luggage, make
faces at the skein of cars unraveling behind you. In Michigan, roads
lead only to other roads: the same dotted white line, eternal border of
corn and cows. You drive and drive and are never there yet.
You eat lunch at a rickety picnic table near a hill in the road where
trucks grind by, farting exhaust. Your tuna sandwich tastes gassy;
your Dixie cup of lemonade is hot as pee. Flies helicopter over a
steaming pile of poop your parents pretend not to see. Your sister
whispers you’ll likely die from bad mayonnaise in an hour or so.
Hours later, your father drives silent and two-handed. Your mother
picks her lip. Your sister is asleep. You are not dead. You are not there
yet.

–Sarah Freligh,
A Brief Natural History of an American Girl
Accents Publishing

More from Sarah Freligh:

• “Blissfield, Michigan: July 1969”
• “Easy”
• “Depending”
• “Old Flame”
• Sarah Freligh Interview

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Brevity, Barn Owl Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Woman, Third Coast, Tar River Poetry, and Painted Bride Quarterly and on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and an Artist’s Exchange grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. She is a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

 We stared at the moon, believing we could see
Neil Armstrong bouncing around from crater
to crater, even Sue who’d called it all a crazy

hoax, a stunt taking place on the Hollywood
soundstage where they used to shoot The Mickey
Mouse Club. We wandered into a cornfield

and got high again and tried to find the rum
Sam had hidden that afternoon and when we
got tired, we lay on the ground and stared some

more at the sky. Billy ran his hand up my thigh
and I said stop though I felt lit up, all green
as in go, and when I’d run out of no’s , I

rolled over and did it while the astronauts
and everyone watched: I did it there in the dirt.

–Sarah Freligh,
A Brief Natural History of an American Girl (2012)
Accents Publishing

More from Sarah Freligh:

• “Easy”
• “Depending”
• “Old Flame”
• Sarah Freligh Interview
• “Waitress”

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Brevity, Barn Owl Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Woman, Third Coast, Tar River Poetry, and Painted Bride Quarterly and on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and an Artist’s Exchange grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. She is a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.