Influence: Sunday

I once dug through garbage
to prove a man did not love me.
Now as I drive around and around
places I can’t believe I sought, open like a robe.

Places I searched for, or stumbled on,
the creek inchoate, the trails dowered in maiden fern,
a night moon in painful relief,
were just as good as any gold sun.

All the while a person sits passenger and sighs,
complains, re-writes history, uses the subjunctive
hates being called person, wants named credit
for these dark, asymptomatic woods

passing as my own dappled memory. I crack
the window. Now everything is wind. I’ve changed.

Merridawn Duckler is a writer from Portland, Oregon, author of INTERSTATE, dancing girl press and IDIOM, winner of the Washburn Prize. Recent work in Ninth Letter, Seneca Review, Emry’s Journal, Mid-American Review. Fellowships/awards include Yaddo, Southampton Poetry Conference, Poets on the Coast. She’s an editor at Narrative and at the philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics.