ALWAYS CURVED
INTO THE DISTANCE
INTO THE DISTANCE
by Sandra Kolankiewicz
In the whole county, there wasn’t a single
angle, the local joke: none of us could
make a straight line. We brought our school books home
every night but never read them, out there
playing kick-the-can or sardines until
they called us in, all of the mothers in
the kitchens watching between stirring and
rinsing. They must have told us nothing was
safe, but we didn’t listen, our horses
in the barns ready to escape down old
railroad beds, the rails and ties salvaged long
before, a cindered line through and beyond
but never direct, always curved into
the distance wherever you stood so that from
childhood we knew we would never quite see
where we were headed until we arrived.
We tossed our jackets and said goodbye to
the day too soon, should have lingered at the
bus stop making evening plans. He wouldn’t
have found her alone, daydreaming beside
the empty road, her house just around the bend.
_____________________________________________________
Sandra Kolankiewicz is the author of several collections of
poems including Turning Inside Out, which was released by
Black Lawrence Press in 2009, and 2014’s The Way You Will
Go from Finishing Line Press. Her most recent collection,
Lost in Transition, was published by Finishing Line Press in
2017. Kolankiewicz’s poems have appeared in Prairie
Schooner, Fifth Wednesday Journal, The London Magazine,
Per Contra, and elsewhere.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Fall 2017 Next page ►
In the whole county, there wasn’t a single
angle, the local joke: none of us could
make a straight line. We brought our school books home
every night but never read them, out there
playing kick-the-can or sardines until
they called us in, all of the mothers in
the kitchens watching between stirring and
rinsing. They must have told us nothing was
safe, but we didn’t listen, our horses
in the barns ready to escape down old
railroad beds, the rails and ties salvaged long
before, a cindered line through and beyond
but never direct, always curved into
the distance wherever you stood so that from
childhood we knew we would never quite see
where we were headed until we arrived.
We tossed our jackets and said goodbye to
the day too soon, should have lingered at the
bus stop making evening plans. He wouldn’t
have found her alone, daydreaming beside
the empty road, her house just around the bend.
_____________________________________________________
Sandra Kolankiewicz is the author of several collections of
poems including Turning Inside Out, which was released by
Black Lawrence Press in 2009, and 2014’s The Way You Will
Go from Finishing Line Press. Her most recent collection,
Lost in Transition, was published by Finishing Line Press in
2017. Kolankiewicz’s poems have appeared in Prairie
Schooner, Fifth Wednesday Journal, The London Magazine,
Per Contra, and elsewhere.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Fall 2017 Next page ►
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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 12, Number 2
(Fall 2017)
Copyright © 2017
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 12, Number 2
(Fall 2017)
Copyright © 2017
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
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