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PoetrySeptember 9-16, 2013 issue

Missile Silos, North Dakota

Kathleen SpivackMarch 12, 2014
Furred, the horizons
are both calling and escaping:
there must be an edge.
Near the bases on the prairie
the farms in silhouette seem homesick;
one can imagine entering their kitchens
and from the stubbled fields
birds rise up, hopeful.
Someone stands at a window
looking for a limit to vision
but the fields press out flat
in every direction
like alternatives with equal value
and young girls who dream
of leaving home
go out with the boys from
the Air Force Base,
pressing their hot doomed bodies
together on back seats of cars.
All day the boys sit
before consoles, staring
at buttons and flashing lights,
waiting to launch
irreversible missiles
on cue, the trajectories blazing
over these flat fields,
over the sky, grand and clanging,
startling the farms,
the right angled roads,
low ceilings and huddled rooms.
Kathleen Spivack
Kathleen Spivack’s memoir, With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Plath, Sexton, Rich, Bishop, Kunitz, was published recently by The University Press of New England. A History of Yearning won the London Book Festival First Prize, 2010. This poem was the third runner-up in the Foley poetry contest 2013.
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