January’s Future Friday – Charlotte Hughes

Charlotte Hughes attends high school in Columbia, South Carolina. She has attended the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio and is an editor for Polyphony Lit. Her poetry can be found in The Louisville Review, Lunch Ticket, The Raleigh Review, and has been honored by Penn State, F(r)iction Magazine, and the University of South Carolina.

Elegy with an I-77 Truck Stop

Driving onto campus, I consider the alternatives. Sink in the swamp. High tide with no footholds. Meet the farm fence going one twenty. I am angry because there is no way to pass the time. I can’t count to twenty before falling asleep, and given the the way music tinning from the car radio numbs me, I wouldn’t be surprised if I fell asleep halfway down the highway. Turing says machines cannot give up but mine does. I am learning the names for different shades of mourning: sound of a plastic wrapper, diesel, green neon lights. I am looking for turn-tracks and loopholes. I dread this & so here is me as the whirring ICEE machine at the back of the truck stop. The whirring is my lullaby (I cry in shades of Blue Raspberry and Cola.) Please, sing me to sleep and tuck in my covers, please. Take my keys, hide them in the boxes of Honey Buns. I’ve been right all along. I don’t need to drive to campus and see you’re gone. I can just be this shrink-wrapped box of Honey Buns—see how I’m bathed in this corporeal glow? I could stay here forever.

A Girl Walks into a New Year’s Eve Party

after Raphael Soyer’s Entering the Studio

Oh baby   this time you’re catty-corner the studio door
clasping hinges   to fall off — where’s the invisible man?
Girl, he could be   in the adirondacks of the Carolina hills,
home  for his tar slush Christmas   rolling large in Vegas
feathery girls saying  try  just one more time   where’s your
twenty twenty luck? Seeing straight? Anyways  look at you
the next incarnation of you  of course  it’s not really you,
the woman with eyebrows meeting in a v   sensible house shoes
half heel  nude pantyhose  trailing up a sensible plum ankle skirt
look    he even added a daub  of grey at your widow’s
peek  after you waltz  in the door with those sickeningly
sensible shoes,  maybe he’ll call you muse. Maybe  mother.
Maybe you should just  clic-clac   clutch my wrist
into the frame. We’ll dance to radio rock   in the studio and
your shoe’ll be gessoed with  muted oil  cornflake yellows &
blues. Stomp a painting onto his mid-century  oak floors.
An   old friend told me  waiting is a death  in itself
but that’s exactly  what I love  about a new year
So later I’m poised right outside the door  at midnight, while
you’re hiccuping  and tripping over my steps  your pantyhose
already fell off   two hours ago   my silver tube top is slipping
your sensible house shoes lost   but God we’re here at least
drink   pray to that   I can’t even write what’ll happen when
we walk in ball drops (new decade) we sing  but that’s the love, isn’t it?