Apricot Jam

by Erin Hyatt

Here, it is always 1985.
There is spoiled chicken
salad on the patio furniture;
there are apricots
rotting on the ground.
I sink my teeth into July,
and boil orange fruit to the bone
on a gasoline fire that stinks
like rust. Just down the road,
an old tractor hums back to life.

Every few hours, a motorcycle
blows through town for whiskey
and coke. I have met too many of
these foreigners; these man-made
cowboys with wedding ring scars,
fumbling through a midnight ride,
thinking they’ve managed to hide
from God.

The pop machine melted
at the ice cream shop, so
we fill our mouths with
bruised apricot jam, dripping orange
clots onto our knees. Somewhere,
a sunburned baby is playing with a
hornet’s nest. Somewhere,
a broken bottle of Jack.
From where I sit,
I can hear the old church purr;
a single fan whirring over a
George Strait song.

Erin Hyatt is a recent graduate of Point Park University, in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts and English.

City of Asylum believes that All Pittsburghers are Poets. With the Poem of the Week series, we seek to increase the readership and appreciation of poetry locally by publishing poems written by residents of Allegheny County of all ages and levels of experience. In partnership with the Poetry Editors at Sampsonia Way Magazine, City of Asylum advances our mission to defend, celebrate, and build on creative freedom of expression. This project received a RADical ImPAct Grant from the Allegheny Regional Asset District (RAD).