We’ve square-danced in a school gym
and we’ve prayed to quell our appetites.
We know the county’s every road
that doesn’t have a name to it,
the Sonic where the carhops doze,
the field we take a flame to it.

We’ve workshopped in a library,
read our worst stuff to the room,
sold art at the local fair
from a friend’s crusty booth,
passed the peace three counties
into a group that saved a seat for us;
watched the preacher’s son
learn the back booth of a Waffle House,
made a disco of a barn,
a ballroom of a cattle chute,
danced till the grid was empty
at the dial tone of a dawn—
the times we fell too hard.

Times passed out on the kitchen floor
making beds of Goodwill,

heirloom, and dollar store quilts:
crazy colors stitched together,
all of us surrounding us.