Before the age of doing
\nand photographing and filming
\nand texting what you did,
\nback when people simply did,
\na girl got married at seventeen,<\/p>\n
recalled tonight under lamplight
\nin an Ozark farmhouse by my old,
\nwidowed Aunt Dot, the woman
\nwho once was her. There were no
\nphotos of the girl as she waited<\/p>\n
in the truck with her first
\ntwo babies for her husband
\nto come out of the bar
\nuntil it was dark, and then
\nin the dark. Nobody filmed him<\/p>\n
at the screen door of the kitchen,
\nwaking from the spell
\nof his anger with a lead pipe
\nin his hand saying, “I believe
\nI killed that cow,” or filmed her<\/p>\n
stepping between his fists
\nand her son on the night he broke
\nher nose. Literal, plainspoken
\nand sorrowful, Dot seems
\nto find her, the poor young girl,<\/p>\n
married for life, and him, my uncle,
\nthe good old boy everyone loved,
\nincluding me, in the shadows
\ncast by her lamp and chair,
\njust the three of them there,<\/p>\n
and me, and the small,
\nhand-held device of this poem.\n
Follow McNair’s thinking about this poem through his revisions of it. (Line changes are highlighted in yellow; revised line breaks are indicated by yellow verticals.)<\/span><\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\t