Poetry by Julia McConnell

                  ​Christian Collins CC




My Ex-Girlfriend, Oklahoma 

Dear Oklahoma,
By the time you read this I’ll be gone six months
and you’ll just be getting out of lock up 
for your second DUI.
Listen, I’m sorry, but
you are a bad girlfriend
you keep breaking my heart 
and embarrassing me in public.

I won’t be sending any checks
but I’ll write you poems
about the way you make me sweat
the way you sing like locusts 
devouring a field
the way you flash your thunderheads 
and promise me a tornado.

I love your big oily heart
the way it fracks
the way it wails
on Saturday night at the Blue Door
when you call yourself Freedom
say you’re from Bartlesville 
when you’re really from Sayre.
I love the way you wrap your legs
around the closest girl to your barstool
and lick her up the back of her neck.

Sunday morning you roll into church
a little bit late and a lot hung over 
and never say nothing
about loving the sinner.

Everyone knows the best way to end things
is to get her name tattooed on your body
but I never got that scissortail flycatcher 
to fly across my shoulders.

My new lover
(who’s never even been to a Walmart)
asks me 
Do you miss your home? 
I don’t know what to say so I point up 
and say I miss the sky. 

Maybe it’s the sky
I need marked across my body
the emptiness I love
in a shape I can touch.
Maybe I don’t need wings anymore.
Maybe I need an anchor.
Maybe I need a whole flock of birds
perched on a telephone wire against the setting sun.
Maybe a pump jack, a dust bowl,
the deed to some mineral rights,
Oral Robert’s praying hands.
Maybe I need wind, hail, flash floods and ice
a whole cycle of storms rotating across my body
to get over my grief about walking away from you
your crimes and your prayers
your crumbling textbooks.

I thought I could be a stranger.
I thought I could fill my pockets
with rattlesnakes
fistfight with the dust
every glancing blow a farewell.

Oklahoma, you’re trash.
I’m trash, too, for leaving.
I’ve gone broke 
trying to bail you out.
I can’t fix you
but this won’t ever be over.
No one needs me like you.




​
Boundless

When I drive west on I-40
through the ochre oceans
of plains just past Amarillo
I want to stop the car and walk
towards horizon
no destination but alone
in the big empty
the tall grass brushing 
against my legs
wind filling my ears
sun hot on my neck 
promising
to go at least as far
as the next boundary
between earth and sky.

I watch mockingbirds swoop
and dive white stripes flashing
and wonder if they feel fear
while flying.  I try to place myself
inside their tiny bodies
my heart pumps faster
wind rushing under wings 
soaring through the empty sky
held aloft in nothing.

I want to drive
out to nowhere and lie down
in the bed of a truck as the stars 
unroll their holy blanket
surrender myself to the terror
of this vast space of nothing
so full of something.




Julia McConnell is a poet and librarian. Her chapbook, Against the Blue, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. Her publications include Right Hand Pointing, Plainsongs, Screen Door Review, SWWIM, Lavender Review, MockingHeart Review, and other journals. Originally from Oklahoma, Julia lives in Seattle with her Jack Russell Terrier.
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