Poetry
Turning Away
By Wendy McVicker
We walked out
into the strangely hollowed
city, looking for coffee,
or maybe breakfast, before
the long drive home.
At the corner, a man held out
his roughened ash-gray hand,
and while I stepped back,
my friend dug in his pockets
for change. It wasn’t much.
He handed it over, felt bad
later for saying, as he had been
to others, “Have a good day.”
What kind of good day
could this man have, living
on the streets?
My friend said he wished
he’d said, “Be safe.”
After breakfast, we passed
the corner again: three men
now, in faded shirts,
grubby beards. We waited
to cross, the light was slow
to change. I had time
to find bills and offer them.
Instead, I stood rigid and still,
felt my back to be a wall, a door
slammed shut. I put my shame
in my pocket, where it continues
to burn a hole. The darkness
of the world called to me.
I didn’t answer.
Instructions. Read carefully.
By Wendy McVicker
If only.
If only this day
came with instructions,
though I know I would
probably ball them up, toss
them over my shoulder
and go rambling
in the woods by the river.
If only this life came
with instructions.
What if it does,
but they’re written
in a lost language, delicate
and indecipherable?
If only this new era
we’re entering came
with instructions. Wait,
it does: others have passed
this way before, they’ve left
us letters and papers,
stories, pictures, worn
suitcases full of teeth.
We’re not so good
at looking back to learn,
looking around, beyond
our own skin, our own
borders. We think
we’re going on a day trip,
we pack toys and one silk
shirt that won’t even keep
us warm. We rush headlong
into the storm.
Wendy McVicker
Wendy McVicker’s latest collection of poetry is Alone in the Burning (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024). She has been an Ohio Arts Council teaching artist for many years. Her poems have appeared in Gyroscope Review, Sheila-Na-Gig online, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and elsewhere, including the anthology Tributaria. She was Athens, Ohio’s poet laureate from 2020 though 2022, where she and her husband raised two sons and now share their home with a Hemingway cat named Dora.