Four Poems by Jane Vogel

Jane Vogel is a retired physical therapist who writes about themes of shelter, home and community. Her poetry and flash fiction have appeared in Blue Lake Review, The BeZine, Storm Cellar and Ekphrastic Review. More poetry from The Feedsack is here.

Union Depot in St. Paul

The young security guard orbiting
the Amtrak waiting room had to be sure
we were waiting for a train, two older
ladies on their separate benches reading
their phones. She had a thirty-day pass
and I was waiting for my husband. I wanted
to know everything about her plan –
Montana, LA, New Orleans, one circular
month. I told her about my husband,
my son in Chicago, a city
she passed through from Boston,
but it was our regular commute,
waiting and meeting at each end,
that she kept asking about.

Urban Haboob

Phoenix, AZ

Desert storm clouds
mean rain or dust.
Hot winds from behind
push me down
the sidewalk. Air smells dry
and granular. In a woolly, beige sky
those low, green, urban stars –
tall fan palms – are still visible, hissing
and snapping in their fight with the coming
storm. Broken pieces already orbit
roofs. I am the last one to leave the street
and shelter in my apartment. I am not the last one
in the street, although folks at the corners with cans
and cardboard signs are fading between dumpsters
and walls. Cars cannot be seen but cannot hide from
oncoming trucks. Now is time to close my own solid
shades and stuff rolled up towels in the window seams.
Yellow burns and blinds outside. The radio explains it all
while I pour some wine. It tastes metallic, hints of oak
and fruit have gone silent on my dusty tongue. Thirty
minutes? An hour? Chalky fog will settle into hopeful,
empty cans returning to the street corners.

Spidershadow

One of the Parker boys glued a black plastic spider onto the drugstore window, an angry message meant for a red-haired waitress who wouldn’t answer the phone. Nobody figured it out. The owner liked spiders and left the eight-legged star to point the way to posters taped on the glass facing the sidewalk: “Methodist Pancake Supper” and “Rummage Sale on King Street,” but, even then, no one walked past. The waitress found a new job on a busier street after the drugstore closed. She answers all her calls in the fast-food drive-thru window, her headphones vibrating “iced coffee” and “breakfast sandwich, extra ketchup.” That Parker boy bought the old drugstore at auction for his real estate start-up. His desk sits under the spider’s shadow, where he waits for clients to call.

A Volunteer Writes Letters to Asylum Seekers in Detention

Estimada Valeria. I hear you are young
and alone. I hear that it has been 17 months
on appeal. My best guess for a card
to cheer your cell has a photo
of a sunflower field. Dear Maria
from Venezuela, waiting to learn
about your daughter’s status. I’m sending
some proverbs about faith, a poem about hope,
blind toss-outs to pierce the isolation.
We Americans love faith and hope.
Dear Sylvia, Dear Leticia, I see
hummingbirds from my window, a plague
on the news. Maybe you like crossword
puzzles. Just one extra page
in your envelope. Estimada Maricela,
I could listen, if you could write,
but we both know being heard
is a luxury, belonging only to people
who own the bed where they dream.
That much I’ve learned from the silence.