POEM OF THE WEEK: SARAH GREEN

 

Sarah Green

 

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Lorain County, 1999

The driver says You’re lucky you got me. Some other guy— He stops.
Cornfields press in.

The road unspools: cassette gone wrong, just ribboning.
I would hate to see you

raped and strangled in a ditch. I would hate to see your throat bruised
and your eyes wild. I would hate to see you jogging, flushed with endorphins—

onto the highway’s stretch of trees, their change this fall the color
of weak tea, as if they didn’t have the energy—

with headphones on when out of nowhere someone holds a knife to you.
I would hate to hold a knife to you.

I would hate to have to—
airport signs—you’re lucky. You are so lucky.

 

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Sarah Green is the author of Earth Science (421 Atlanta, 2016) and the editor of Welcome to the Neighborhood (Ohio University Press, forthcoming in 2019). She is currently at work on her second full-length collection of poetry.