Merridawn Duckler is a poet, playwright from Portland. Her work has been widely published with nominations for Best Creative Non-Fiction Anthology, Pushcart, and residency at the Arizona Poetry Center judged by Farid Matuk. Awards include NEA, Yaddo, Squaw Valley, finalist Sozoplo Fiction Fellowship, Southampton Poetry Conference, finalist Gloria Burgess Fellowship Poets on the Coast, Wigleaf Top 50. She’s an editor at Narrative and at the international philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics.
Sad Ballad of the Rental Car
At the Houston Rental Center,
when the man with teeth missing (but his soul intact)
called me cute I heard the earth crack
and emit the furies, massed countless
hollow-eyed, faceless commentators,
half bird, half-maid, bloody-mouthed,
roaring out at the drop of this appalling
comment you do not make to a woman
from Portland, Oregon
poised to tear into that rental
attendant who said he was from Georgia.
How long have you lived in Houston, I said?
18 years.
But how long before you say you are from Houston?
Never. I’ll always be from Georgia.
I was born in rain.