Poetry by Victoria Ruiz

              Jane Rahman CC



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Interstate Love Song Ode

Everytime I hear Interstate Love Song, I am back in 
the nineties taking laps up and down 
the three mile drag, sitting shotgun. 

Everytime I hear this song, I light up 
a smoke. Daring 
the prop to outrun the grave. 

When you died, we became 
family- more night sky than blood,
more lovesong than interstate. 

To say the gunman wrings himself around the revolver 
automatically is to say, I have loved 
more than I have not. Is to ask who we are when not in cars
fogged with windows like secrets 
at the end of a sentence knowing
I am here for life. Is to say, the next time, 
talk to me in hard times. Before 
there is nothing left to say, which 

means I am still waiting 
for a Sunday 
afternoon. 





​On Returning

Hurry heart, sit down
beside the steaming teacup
before it grows cold in hand.

Returning is not failure. 

I have your eyes and cannot pretend 
they haven’t seen good in you. 

Have we estranged for the right reasons? 

I remember climbing what my young mind remembers were pyramids in South Dakota. 
These ancient ways in which we grow familiar and distant. Which is to say we are no
longer closer than we are mere foothills just waiting for footing. 

I remember driving south to the end of the papermap.
I remember the Sedalia rain falling on my face at nine. 
The Mexican dances, that you wanted me to find a good
first or second generation boy with skin like mine- sparkles
in his intent eyes.

Who am I to say it wasn’t enough, it might have been your best. 

Who am I to say you fathered the others better
than you fathered me. I might have been
the luckiest one.​
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Victoria is a Minneapolis writer who loves time in the kitchen with music on full-tilt while the dog bathes in the sun.

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