Gary Charles Wilkens

Dorianne Laux

Bettie and Gertie

They have plenty of dust. They sell dust
from the ribcage interior of Waiting in the Wings
in small-town Texas, dust served proudly
on pieces of junk-toys, books, flattened balls,
indigo stained glass dolls and cracked cups.

Bettie yells for Gertie to come up front
when we walk in, rising at once to look busy,
to shape her dust into more pleasing postures,
to recline it better in the backward-stumbling sunlight
while she keeps up a wind of hopeful words.

Bettie asks Gertie what they have her doing back there,
moves some dust from the left to the right, straightens
some handleless pans while telling us how hot it is,
how much her old hands hurt when it rains.

Bettie tells Gertie it'd be nice to have another box
to hold the old pictures of somebody's uncle
as we nod and hmm, saying yes to her lines
and rushing out the dusty door.
Gertie drifts in, her gait like Godot.

Gary Charles Wilkens teaches composition at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. His poems have appeared in The Texas Review, The Cortland Review, The Adirondack Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and Pemmican. His first collection, The Red Light was My Mind, is forthcoming from the Texas Review Press. For more information about him, please see his website: http://www.gcwilkens.com.

All content Š2006 by Ward 6 Review and the individual authors, unless otherwise stated. No content may be reproduced without the consent of the authors.