Boise City, Oklahoma by Caroline Klocksiem | Poetry

Poetry – Issue 10 | September 2010

Boise City, Oklahoma

by Caroline Klocksiem

They said trees and railroads willy nilly, houses and fine markets.
They said a clean, central well like in fairy tales, in pictures
and notices with exclamations, that’s exactly what. But my lil’ girl
in her white Sunday best stood there on the dirt
saying, Papa I don’t see nothin’ like trees,
all’s I see is flat. And at first

I fixed my eyes way off, past the wooden stakes
pushing up like shoots, past the flies and flags flapping in the wind. All of us
right off that train just as mad as piss ants fuming and buzzing, and I

soon enough came to thank the good Lord for the bank that’d
said yes to me, for that hundred dollars clutched tight at the pit of my shoe.

Caroline Klocksiem has been consumed by shrimp, grits, and biscuits in her home state of South Carolina, Atlanta’s Krispy Kreme donut milkshake, Seattle’s Thanksgiving pumpkin cheesecake, cannolis from Ferrara’s in NYC, lobster rolls from the Williamsburg Snack Shack, eggplant parm at this little place in Boston’s North End that’s now closed, fresh tomatoes in Venice, gnocchi with walnut cream sauce in Florence, farm fresh Slovenian eggs, avocados and blue potatoes from the Guadalupe Market in Arizona, seafood stew on her honeymoon in Cancun, and her husband’s mint juleps in steamy Alabama, where she lives now.

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Literary Bohemian

Poetry – Issue 10 | September 2010