erin carlyle / poem

Passport

I wanted to get a passport,

so I could leave, but I didn’t 

have enough money, and the paperwork

is so long, the downpayment for retreat, impossible,

so I walked away on the flatness of a road

down a path past Japanese climbing vines and old

Kudzu brought in by unsuspecting 

people in the 1930s. I think 

I even saw a car swallowed whole—only the shape

of it remained. I walked

past white hydrangea bushes and a patch

of black-eyed Susan. I wanted to leave

because an alligator ate my puppy, 

but I never blamed the alligator. I blamed

myself for sleeping too long

near Milkweed that swelled my eyes shut. 

In this place, there are children who go missing 

in floods that grow so quickly now

you’d never see it coming, and even though

it rains, you can’t drink the water, 

and across the way fire has killed 

those trees, and then people celebrate 

with more fire. I wanted to leave,

but this is the only place I’ve ever known. 

I walk toward home picking up 

any rock I see that shines a little 

in the sunlight—pockets full. 

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Erin Carlyle is a poet living in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work can be found in journals such as Tupelo Quarterly, Arts and Letters, Jet Fuel, and Prairie Schooner. Her second collection, Girl at the End of the World, is out now with Driftwood Press. Currently, she teaches writing at Georgia State University.