Patricia Waters

On Losing Nameless Things

Tad Hall 1990

He picks me up at dawn, shortly after 5,
over an hour from Squaw Valley to the airport in Reno,
Director’s son—I’d seen him around, not to talk to,
road opens onto desert
hot pinky orange sun, he drives fast—
we both have long hair, windows down—
Mustang? Trans-Am? Morning’s new air
cool, clean, I want to go home—
see my children, work on poems
I want to keep going,
keep driving into that sun, east
to where green begins,
no steady pour of small talk like what
you make in a car with a stranger—
what’s in the car is charged,
like I’m touching something electric,
some current, we are still talking
when we pull up to Departures,
I am wearing a dress, pearls, good shoes,
after all I’m going home—
he opens the door for me,
we stand by the trunk,
my luggage lying there
like an unclaimed body no one recognizes,
he looks at me
Will you marry me?
You look like a queen,
No, you really do. You are a queen,
I don’t know what that makes me.
Once I gave a girl a ride to the airport.
I told her I loved her.
She started to cry. Don’t say that,
Don’t say that, she told me
my throat closes, his face blurs,
he says
But I’ll tell you.
You look like a queen.
I touch his hand, kiss his cheek,
pick up my bag and turn.

Patricia Waters has published two books of poetry with Anhinga Press: The Ordinary Sublime (2006) and Fallen Attitudes (2014). Born and reared in Nashville, she lives in a small town in East Tennessee. A maker of small books, she completed graduate course work in Book Arts and several book arts workshops at Penland School of Crafts. Having a history of collaboration with visual artists (Cy Twombly) and print artists (Goedele Peeters, Antwerp), she had recent work published by Schirmer/Mosel (Munich), also contributing to a gallery show catalogue for painter Max Renkel. Work is forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, for instance.