Poetry by Kelsey Hoff

            emilyrachelmartin CC

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Please let me sit in the passenger seat
 
Driving into the angle of light between
school & dinner table, bible study &
practice practice practice morning
& afternoon, let me sing into the
horizon. I get my share of looking at
the back of someone else’s head.
Take me anywhere but eight. Let me see
businesses along the divided highway
coming head-on & lit like a
boulevard, the windshield a prism
bending Midwestern sun into
soft rock southern California. Folks
passing through like Sheryl Crow
rasping from the dashboard. I can
hear promises of alternative routes to
righteousness in collapsing clean rock
rhythms, rollick over the dash into
yellow-orange free association--
my body’s desire to trade this seatbelt
for a guitar, but in the corner of my eye
your hand moves from stick shift to volume.




Double Solitaire
 
Carol’s rings glittered & cracked
beers, flicked ashes, flipped cards,
chipped away at the deck three
by three & my little hands mirrored
hers. Ace to King & then shuffle again.
 
Hand after hand the cards moved
almost on their own, the sense of it
I can still conjure: red & black counting
down then shooting into divine order.
 
I was twelve when she died & couldn’t
ask anyone else for that kind of
magick: edges flicking wood veneer
table, talk that floated in smoke while
the cards kept their own score.
 
I practiced on my bedroom carpet
with what she left me: a diamond
ring, a deck of cards & a game
I could play all alone.




Please let me sit in the passenger seat
 
Getting back into the truck with you,
I’ll never be sucked in smoothly:
a cassette gliding from soft fingertips
to mechanical cradle for the hundredth time.
Your new Chevy has automatic transmission,
satellite radio. The back seat has grown
leg room. No tiny feet swing into the cab
ahead of your own, scuffing your interior.
You tell me there are over a hundred
stations, to put on whatever I want--
I still choose college rock. The only good
timing I had in my life was acquiring
my tastes when music & lyrics were
backwards compatible with wisdom
plucked from earthbound ugliness.
When wooden instruments & voices
rattled louder than a loose muffler.
I’m tired & stiff from driving steady
highways into blinding glare. Let me
back into the cab ticking with rhythms
I learned how to escape from, all the
lyrics I knew without understanding.
Turn the volume up like you did
every time I started to sing.

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Kelsey Hoff is a poet and freelance writer in Chicago, where she received her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College in 2017. She writes tarot poems for her collaborative blog project, Stinger & Fringe. Her poems are published in Columbia Poetry Review, Poets.org, Redheaded Stepchild, Hobo Camp Review, and elsewhere. Follow her on Twitter at @MidwestMadGirl.  

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