Joshua Mehigan is the author of Accepting the Disaster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). He works as an English teacher at the College of Staten Island, and as a workshop instructor for Brooklyn Poets. The recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
The cement plant was like a huge still
nailed in gray corrugated panels
and left out forty-five years ago
in the null center of a meadow
...
Their ruler is elected state by state,
and no one cuts his heart out as he drowses.
Their senior citizens still copulate.
Their convicts are allowed to change their blouses.
...
They're over now forever, the long dances.
Our woods are quiet. The god is gone tonight.
Our girls, good girls, have shaken off their trances.
...
This is the place it happened. It was here.
You might not know it was unless you knew.
All day the cars blow past and disappear.
...
It was her first time coming home from college.
She headed downtown for a drink or two.
Her girlfriend went home early. That was Christmas.
Now, under sapling pine trees in the clearing,
...