How Hometowns Work

A bent old woman
wrapped in two coats

drags a folding cart
full of groceries

through a crosswalk.
A blaring freight train

blasts across
another intersection

at the far end
of the same street.

Every other soul
in town, including mine,

sits trapped between
in idling cars belching smoke.

You can read all about it
in the yellowed newspaper pages

that cover the windows
of out-of-business

flower shops
and storefront churches.

*

Brian Beatty is the author of five poetry collections and a spoken word album. Beatty’s poems and short stories have appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Appalachian Journal, Conduit, Cowboy Jamboree, CutBank, Evergreen Review, Floyd County Moonshine, Gulf Coast, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, The Moth, The Museum of Americana, ONE ART, Phoebe, The Quarterly, Rattle, The Southern Review, Strange Horizons, and Sycamore Review.