Second Prize winner of the FuPo Poetry Contest (2021)
~
To the Owner of the Gray Volkswagen
who thought you were parked in our parking lot,
you’re not. Your car is moving on its own.
This came over the Safeway p.a. I was on the bread aisle,
hiding a secret, terrible tremor at the idea:
not even our possessions need us.
Which reminds me, I need paper plates.
I need Hungry Man dinners & plastic forks.
Did I leave the coffee on?
Did I lock my door?
It would be fathomable if our things, say, ran away with the spoon.
Say that my absconded toaster saw a world, a whole world
of things to hug warm each morning, that it felt
hollow, unfulfilled, that it wanted to nourish
a pregnant mother, a hurried husband out the door toward work,
occasional pop-tarts for the once & future children.
But that our objects are running away alone –
Why would you do that Mr. Coffee?
Do you even know?
I’d like to imagine the Volkswagen growling
down the PCH, windows down in the rain,
Steppenwolf on the radio, getting just a little bit free
on its way to San Francisco, to a rainbow gathering
of rogue punch bugs. Not that it ambled into traffic
like one in a blackout, ambulatory but vacant as a dog
already hit once. I need intention. I want desire.
I need to stop asking myself “how did I get here,”
with these bags in my hand,
my key in my front door.
~
Zackary Medlin grew up in South Carolina, ran away to Alaska, and now lives in Utah. He is the winner of the Nancy D. Hargrove Editor’s Choice Prize, the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry, and a recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award. He holds an MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah, where he was awarded a Clarence Snow Fellowship. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Colorado Review, The Cincinnati Review, Grist, and more recently in Tinderbox Poetry and The Boiler.