Sean Thomas Dougherty: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sean Thomas Dougherty, 2021. Photo by Melanie Rae

________________________________________________

 

Snowglobe

 

It is late and I want to sleep

but the two girls who work at the gas-station-convenience store

next door have gotten out of work and it’s 2AM and they are laughing

and scraping their cars and I want to peek out the window to see

them push their little plastic scrapers over their early 90s models

Fords and toss snowballs and talk about “Jaime just called” and “God girl, you’re

graced” and I wonder how they will spend the minimum wage

they made tonight, a slow night, with everyone staying in

because of the storm, whether Jaime will take the tall one

out (I recognize her voice from when I buy milk every other

day for my child) and whether she will say My Treat!  Or

maybe they will go to a bar, since they seem like they may

almost be that age, though I doubt it, it is so hard

for me to tell now, and they will drink beers

and dance and tenderly wipe the sweat

off of each other’s faces, but then I wonder about the other

girl, where will she go, now that they have started their cars

and I hear their engines about to roar but they don’t, only idle

and idle and I figure they are warming them to get the ice that was too hard

for their little plastic scrapers but they just sit there

so finally I rise from my chair and peek out my curtain

and am startled to see them both in the front seat of the tall girl’s car

and the other one, the one who I think is prettier and who says to my son,

hey sport when he comes in and once tugged his hat over his eyes, she is crying,

crying and saying something I can’t hear over the engine’s

idle, some song is playing something hard on their radio and the snow

is falling and the tall girl is staring up through the windshield and I can’t make out

her expression through the fog whether she is upset or wondering come on

how can I get out of this and get home cause I’m tired when I see her bend

over and take the other girl’s head in her hands and now I can’t get to bed

because it has been almost an hour and their cars are still outside idling

and they are still holding onto each other and the whole world is snowing all at once

like a snowglobe and everything has become fragile and holy, amen.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author or editor of twenty books, including the The Dead Are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press Poetry Prize. “Snowglobe” is taken from his collection, All You Ask for Is Longing: New and Selected Poems, published by BOA Editions in 2014. His book The Second O of Sorrow (BOA Editions, 2018) received both the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Housatonic Book Award from Western Connecticut State University. Over the decades he has worked in factories, in a newspaper plant, as an untenured college lecturer, and in a pool hall. He now teaches writing part-time for the Master of Fine Arts Program of WCSU, and works as a Med Tech and caregiver for people recovering from traumatic brain injuries in Erie, Pennsylvania. More info on Sean can be found here.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________    

Two girls in a burnt-out car, 1980s. Photo by Peter Anderson

Comments

[lally]

sean thomas dougherty has been one of my all-time favorite poets since the first poem I read of his a couple of decades ago, and this poem exemplifies why

[John Clarke]

A fine poem. Thanks. Amen.

[Clarinda]

What a marvel this poem is. And so is your likening it to a snow globe, Terence.

[Doug Pell]

9 million stories in the naked city. Great poem. Draws you in and leaves you there.

[Denise Duhamel]

The shakeup, upside-down fun and magic of a snow globe is complicated by the young women in the car and very real lives. Lovely poem of witness.

[Grace Cavalieri]

How poetry tells who we are like no other art form.

[Minnie Bruce Pratt]

Thank you for the back and forth of how we know, and then don't know, and then know again, the depth of other people's lives.

[Eileen Reich]

Great poem.

[Patrick Clancy]

T - Your weekly gifts always help me to slow down. This one brought me to a complete stop.

Thanks much. For the poem and for introducing me to the poet.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Beautiful. Thanks!

[Elinor Nauen]

I'm with Lal, I've been a fan of Sean Thomas Dougherty for years & this poem is exactly why. Just what I needed. Thanks to both of you.

[Terence Winch]

Patrick---Thanks for the comment.

[Greg Masters]

Wow, a stunner of a poem. Empathy through the mist.

[Bob Holman]

Hear hear!