Things were not free back then, in 1973, but they were nearly free, cheap but good, easy to find, colorful, abundant. You could leave a quarter in a can on the roadside and take a bunch of flowers set in jam jars, or grab a handful of berries, picked fresh. You could rent a two-bedroom apartment for 50 dollars a month, no extra charge for a dog, or railroad cat. For 15 cents, hand made tortillas were wrapped in thin tin foil with a pat of butter or a wedge of cheese folded in the center. The left headlight was shot, the grill held together with rope and electrical tape. We picked seeds from our teeth with a matchbook cover from the restaurant we worked in nights and weekends until it frayed and lost its edge. I pointed at the cows. Patricia drowsed. We were as close to free as we could get.
Acknowledgments and Notes
Copyright © 2012 by Dorianne Laux
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-937693-27-5 (e-book edition)
ISBN 978-1-937693-04-6 (print edition)
Acknowledgments:
“Music My Rampart,” Pebble Lake Review
Dolly’s Breasts, American Poetry Review
Nearly Free, SmokeLong Quarterly
Secondhand Coat, BLIP Magazine
Waitress, BLIP Magazine
The Year of My Hair, Green Mountains Moving
Black She-Snake Speaks, MacGuffin
Note: “Music My Rampart” is a phrase from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven.”
Illustration: “The Shape of Things to Come” by Joshua Flint
Proofreader: Tim McBride
Originally printed as a chapbook in an edition limited to 200 copies
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Table of Contents
Red Dragonfly Press E-book Editions
Waitress
Woman in a Bar
She
Secondhand Coat
Black She-Snake Speaks
The Year of My Hair
Dolly’s Breasts
“Music My Rampart”
Nearly Free
Acknowledgments and Notes