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Column 599

Restless After School

Intro by Ted Kooser
09.11.2016

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.


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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. 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 © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.

Column 600
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