The Landscape Persists + Letter to E, Corvallis

The Landscape Persists

Hannah drives me to Salem for the first time
in ten months exactly. Last time I was on this highway

I had someone else’s hand in mine
& my own spit limning my hair like a halo.

Summer laid down dim on the semi trucks
by the rest stop. Blackbirds took their places

in the sky. Sheep exited the fields one
by one for the slaughter. Consider this practice

for leaving a home I’ve left again & again & still
not left behind. Cloudbank over the treeline,

fluster of pines. There is a heart in me, bloody
& broad, still humming like steady machinery.

I see the word ghoul spray-painted on a Union-
Pacific railway car. I see heavy weather

banking low over the rye. As they have before,
red-tailed hawks circle a telephone line,

a line of smoke rises from a farmer’s
burn pile, mute signals going gray.

Far off beyond the road, I see a field, half-
lit, where the clouds don’t clear.

It’s not a place the car can go.
Even the deer won’t die out there.

There’s a slant of pallid sun
knifing through that hill

where the pines don’t trouble the land.
It’s not quite light, but it’s better than nothing.

Letter to E, Corvallis

I thought you would put me in the hospital
Everyone thought you would put me in the hospital

They said Get a gun so I put a string of bells
on my door handle like it was Christmas

but it was August & everybody had left town
& you were the only practice I had at running

I walked alone at night I heard your voice
at every bus stop on the way to the party

I was in my slut era I was doubled over
Amanda hauled me into the Uber

I was blacked out on a Thursday on Grant Avenue
slipping on the mud-washed lawns

I didn’t want to keep my mouth shut anymore
but I didn’t want to use the word violence

Meanwhile the torch outside the armory kept burning
& I listened for the sound of bells ringing

It’s not true that learning to love the danger
means the danger loses its power

the only powerless thing was me
in the middle of the street like a loose dog

victim of so many small crimes
that I brought upon myself

Just like original sin there is supposedly
an original lesson in all of this

& it’s my own fault for not learning it
over & over again

Seeing your car hearing your voice
& stepping back into the road

knowing you’d find me
even if the torch went out

Natalie Eleanor Patterson is a poet, editor, and instructor with an MFA in poetry from Oregon State University. She is the author of the chapbook Plainhollow and the editor of Dream of the River, and has work featured in Sinister Wisdom, Hunger Mountain, CALYX, and elsewhere. She is currently a PhD student in poetry.