Lake Country
Frey Lemonholm
I’d catch an unmistakable urge to roll, laying in the grass, mind in the late afternoon clouds migrating always in the direction of their shadows, shadows on the left side looking south, I share the late afternoon’s suspicion, a trick had been played, the clouds, blown by the wind off the plain. A plain which hides nothing, presents nothing, eyes remain on the shadow, on what was left, suspicion of a trick so deft it robbed the tricked of its very premise. How blue was Lake Ore-Be-Gone, a question tried but not believed in, question of geography. Agates no longer concealed among the pebbles along the path, farmers export their soil, fertility of an ancient lakebed, carried by the truckload, thinking thins, wrong answers strained by a question’s false promise, Big Detroit and Little Detroit named, eroded sand bar which separated, waters mix, distinction continues, words search for questions, false imagery. Words drown on jet skis, no buoyancy, only the westward undercurrent. Two towns, neither farther north than the other, one privileged by memory, left before a loss could be registered, the other a reconstruction, obsessed by the fear it had lost itself already. How does one land, vertigo already in the ground, vacuum you can only pass over, trains don’t stop and since the underpass, neither do the cars, Detroit Lakes the tourist town, we were too, knew we wouldn’t stick. Three small churches, one pastor, commuting, did you ever consider Fergus Falls, or Vargas, or Perham, or Frazee, turkeys crammed too close, or Morehead, but no, Morehead is too big, too close to Fargo, and it floods every spring.
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Frey (PO' 2021) is the proud English language assistant of 300 schoolchildren in East Madrid. He majored in English to get swipe access to the Crookshank library but still sometimes writes poetry.
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