POETRY

Waypoints

By Elizabeth Rose Bruce     VOLUME 59 No. 1

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Sometimes it’s nice to know
exactly what you’re getting, like
“Exit right onto Long Road ”
or the sound a catbird makes.

After we drew names for
our new white kitten from a hat,
no one ever really called her
Snowball. She was just kitty.

We named the boulder
in the woods behind our house
the big rock and the field
was always just the field.

There was the pony field across
the street and the big field
with the pond. We took our
bikes down the big hill
when we were old enough.

The winding road that tunnels
with trees and teems with
owls and possums at night
will forever be the ghost road.

I love when the word old in
Old Mill Trail or
Old Main Highway is tacked on
haphazardly to the street

sign in a different font or
a fresher shade of green.
Enough with the figurative,
the nuance, and the ornate.

Give me just what I want—
bestfriend, fireplace, passionfruit,
the weekend. I’ll turn left onto
Lovers’ Lane and meet you there.

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ELIZABETH ROSE BRUCE is a poet, editor, and bartender from Chattanooga, TN, currently residing in Greensboro, NC. Finalist for the Dorianne Laux Prize for Poetry and recipient of a residency fellowship at the Eliot Summer House, Liz’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in Raleigh Review, Poetry South, Arkana, and elsewhere, as well as anthologized in the collection Objects in This Mirror from Press 53. They hold an MFA from the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where they were Poetry Editor of The Greensboro Review. You can find her on most platforms @elizabethrosebruce.


VOLUME 59 No. 1