At the Cotillion Ballroom in Wichita, Kansas
The name conjures crinoline skirts and tea dances,
a white dinner jacket, prim and pressed.
My son and I sit near the back and take in
what’s here now: an older couple sipping Coors
in matching camo jackets while three girls
strut the aisle like runway models, bare shoulders
gleaming beacons. Light catches on a rodeo buckle
big as a flapjack as the cowboy wearing it
tips his hat. The woman next to us brags she’s seen
the headliner fifteen times, but we’ve come
for the opening act: The drummer and my son—
cousins born four months apart—shared daycare snacks
and a Kindergarten playground, chased lizards
on my parents’ West Texas farm. When the band,
more southern rock than country twang, sings
of first kisses and beer and church, the words
land soft and sweet—expected but lovely,
like the snow falling beyond these walls in the
February dark. All the world’s a cliché tonight
except these two boys—the one on stage
and the one beside me. Years ago they raced
through Pepa’s pastures, sidestepping cow patties,
ever alert for Prickly Pear and rattlesnakes.
Caution so early taught it was automatic,
they ran without fear. No one had died yet.
No divorces or lost jobs. No mistakes,
no regrets. The boys ran at full throttle
with no brakes, little engines of heat, combustible
and tuned to the music of pumping blood.
They ran on, not yet tangled in the heartbreak
of every country song coming their way.
Janice Northerns
Janice Northerns is the author of SOME ELECTRIC HUM (Lamar University Literary Press, 2020), winner of the Byron Caldwell Smith Book Award from the University of Kansas, the Nelson Poetry Book Award, and a WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Poetry. The author grew up on a farm in rural West Texas and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas Tech University, where she received the Robert S. Newton Creative Writing Award. Other honors include a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a Brush Creek Foundation writing residency, and nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. She lives in Kansas and is currently working on her second book, a hybrid collection of poetry and essays inspired by the life of Cynthia Ann Parker.