Hannah Matzecki
​Image by Janet Meyer from Pixabay                                                                                          
Hannah Matzeci is the editor of Kitchen Table Quarterly, and is humbled to have had work previously appear in Ghost City Review and Warm Milk Vol. 3. 

Hope, Texas

We go west— 

under angel oak canopies holding needy ghosts and 
side-swept spanish moss curtains that smell like 

summer, thick and humid
with sweat that soaks through white cotton shirts

we go alongside open toothed alligator mouths
and vats of boiled gas-station peanuts, across bridges

suspended over rivers like an omen 
where barges carried people but called them cargo

by ranks of ankles bound to black bags, married by bodies 
to palms prodding at lost wrappers with pity 

and past sunburnt armies boarding air conditioned busses
all pledging their allegiance to Elvis

We go west— 

away from broken wood slat buildings and
rickety fire escapes rocked by old time roller coasters

away from linen shawls slipped from shoulders, sudsed and wrung and strung 
above cluttered soot courtyards and bedrooms that are kitchens, too

away from snowbound streets lashed with thatch
and windows framing gilt candles after the sun has gone each Friday

though we can’t seem to remember 
any of those things now…

There is a sign that says
Hope, Texas (population 673)

where rusted trucks melt into rusted gates
and boarded walls slump tired 


into forgotten dust-bleached verandas
that once made a home for trellised honeysuckle

offering lemonade and reprieve from a midday heat
heavy enough to break stern cowboy brows

that have
no place left

to look back from
there are no hobbled porches for them 

to stand on and squint 
disapprovingly at far away license plates going west

there aren’t even any paper cups with popped plastic lids
hiding in burnt pastureland like starving snakes— 

just another tumbleweed on the highway
to an emerald city somewhere else 

just another pencil scratch on a wrinkled map
marking a name that used to be a place

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