POETRY

The Inn at Tallgrass

By Dana Roeser     VOLUME 51.2

Vertical Divider



              When I started my downward
slide it had his name on it.
              Katherine said, It’s the Suicide
Express. In cursive like “Donna”

or “Sally” on the side of a chipped
              boat in a weedy lot
behind a defunct “repair shop”
              by the Wabash River. It even

              has a bed of grass and
weeds sprouting from its dirt-strewn
              hull. Bed! Yikes.
Don’t say that word. With his

name. I texted him and said
              there was a golf course
behind me at this
              Kansas hotel that I was

              forbidden to run on. What
I meant was, You are
              a golf course I’m
forbidden to sleep with.

On the other side of the abandoned
              boat repair shop were
giant sheds for sculls that
              the rowing team used

              and the steep wood-planked
ramp I ran up and down
              sometimes for putting
in the boats. That was Indiana. That

was years ago. But loneliness
              was a place I hove
close to. Even all those years
              with children. In my giant

              toe-box running shoes, I
visited parks I never showed them.
              Now they are gone. And for
the short-term I am living away

from the graveyard
              of their childhoods. It’s the
natural order of things
              for them to go. Why is it

              I can’t shake my disconsolation?
My husband visits me during my visiting-
              writer job in Kansas. And I shake
all over. Because with my

pumpkin and my two bouquets
              of mums, sunflowers, and
eucalyptus, my weird “instant”
              risotto boxes

              and Pamela’s baking mix
(but no bourbon or sherry, thank God),
              in the upgraded
hotel “apartment,” I am returning

to what I’ve craved. To live alone.
              To wait for the right man.
A man, dark and sparkling, Adderall-
              addled—whose name

              is inscribed on the boat
of my undoing, for example—to come
              along so we can
settle down and have a child. What is his

name but Grief? Loss of the job
              I held and loved for
years; of my treasured father; of
              Eleanor and Lucy, my daughters.




DANA ROESER is the author of The Theme of Tonight’s Party Has Been Changed, recipient of the 2013 Juniper Prize for Poetry, as well as Beautiful Motion: Poems and In the Truth Room, both winners of the Morse Poetry Prize. She received an NEA fellowship in 2007. Recent work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, and Green Mountains Review.

VOLUME 51.2