LEAVING
by Gail Peck
Once you are left
you are always left
a clock ticking backwards
you tried to crawl out the window
when your father packed his suitcase
and were pulled back
you opened the door
and ran after the car until breathless
Why does the sound of a train whistle
not make you sad when one
took your mother away for months
Perhaps because your grandmother
played The Lonesome Railroad Blues
on her harmonica and the dog danced
The calendar nailed to the wall
turned one month over another
until winter was gone
Daffodils bloomed the dogwood
reopened Christ’s wounds
Curious girl who gathered flowers
from fields and pulled petals
from daisies—he loves me, he . . .
_____________________________________________________
Gail Peck is the author of nine books. Her first full-length
collection of poetry, Drop Zone, won the Texas Review Southern
and Southwestern Poets Breakthrough Award and was published
by Texas Review Press; The Braided Light, published by Main
Street Rag, won the 2014 Lena Shull Book Contest from the
North Carolina Poetry Society. Peck’s latest collection, a
chapbook, is titled An Instant Out of Time and is available from
Finishing Line Press. Poems and essays have appeared in
Southern Review, Nimrod, Greensboro Review, Brevity,
Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Comstock Review,
and elsewhere.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2020 Home ►
Once you are left
you are always left
a clock ticking backwards
you tried to crawl out the window
when your father packed his suitcase
and were pulled back
you opened the door
and ran after the car until breathless
Why does the sound of a train whistle
not make you sad when one
took your mother away for months
Perhaps because your grandmother
played The Lonesome Railroad Blues
on her harmonica and the dog danced
The calendar nailed to the wall
turned one month over another
until winter was gone
Daffodils bloomed the dogwood
reopened Christ’s wounds
Curious girl who gathered flowers
from fields and pulled petals
from daisies—he loves me, he . . .
_____________________________________________________
Gail Peck is the author of nine books. Her first full-length
collection of poetry, Drop Zone, won the Texas Review Southern
and Southwestern Poets Breakthrough Award and was published
by Texas Review Press; The Braided Light, published by Main
Street Rag, won the 2014 Lena Shull Book Contest from the
North Carolina Poetry Society. Peck’s latest collection, a
chapbook, is titled An Instant Out of Time and is available from
Finishing Line Press. Poems and essays have appeared in
Southern Review, Nimrod, Greensboro Review, Brevity,
Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Comstock Review,
and elsewhere.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2020 Home ►
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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 15, Number 1
(Spring 2020)
Copyright © 2020
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 15, Number 1
(Spring 2020)
Copyright © 2020
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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