The Trip
we used to pile into my dad’s van, drive
all the way from Nebraska to Texas
mostly in
silence, because complaining about the unbearable
heat would just make my dad turn the car back
around, and home
was even worse than three hundred miles of
flat black asphalt, lines of heat
reflecting off the horizon
in wavy cartoon lines. once we had reached the ocean, nothing
could keep us quiet; we screamed
from sunup to sundown, splashed in the cool
ocean surf, trying to erase
the memories
of hot tar and dead cornfields.
Holly Day was born in Hereford, Texas, “The Town Without a Toothache.” She and her family currently live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she teaches writing classes at the Loft Literary Center. Her published books include the nonfiction books Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Guitar All-in-One for Dummies, and the poetry books “Late-Night Reading for Hardworking Construction Men” (The Moon Publishing) and “The Smell of Snow” (ELJ Publications), while her needlepoints and beadwork have recently appeared on the covers of The Grey Sparrow Journal and QWERTY Magazine.
Copyright © 2015 by Holly Day
Home Page Cover Photo by Ira Joel Haber