•  
  • Print Issues
  • Bellezine
  • About
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Non-Fiction
  • Submit
  • Menu
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Non-Fiction
  • Submit
  •  
  • Print Issues
  • Bellezine
  • About

Probabilities

Leah Browning Poetry

There was nowhere to stop back then—
forty-five minutes of scrub brush
and the empty road ahead—
no gas stations, no rest stops,
not even a phone booth to call for help.

One night we drove past
a young woman without a coat
walking by the side of the road
and my parents stopped
to ask if her car had broken down

because that’s what people did then,
but she was barefoot and wouldn’t
(or couldn’t) respond, and so they asked me
to try to convince her to get into the car
with us. It was dark, and cold,

and on the radio Crystal Gayle was singing—
she was on all the country stations then,
a pretty woman with dark hair that fell in a curtain
almost down to her feet. I’d read once
that she had to use an entire bottle of shampoo

every time she washed it, though who knew
if that was true or not. And sometimes
I’m not sure whether these are good memories
or bad—leaning out the car window
trying to coax a stranger to stop walking

and crawl into the back seat with me
though she might have had a knife in her belt
but in the dark she seemed as fragile as a deer
and in this life sometimes you have to choose,
and so they stopped the car and I called her over. 

 

About Leah Browning
Leah Browning is the author of three short nonfiction books for teens and pre-teens and six chapbooks. Her most recent chapbooks are Orchard City, a collection of short fiction published by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2017, and Out of Body, a collection of poetry published by Dancing Girl Press in 2018. Browning’s fiction and poetry have recently appeared in The Forge Literary Magazine, The Threepenny Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, and elsewhere. In addition to writing, Browning serves as editor of the Apple Valley Review. Her website is located at www.leahbrowning.com.

More Poetry

Negotiating My Survival After The Zombie Apocalypse

What can you do?
asks the man wearing a flak jacket,
guessing already I am as useful as a
split lip.

Poetry Terri Linn Davis
Last Day of the Viaduct / Linda Waterfall Is Dead

have you ever fallen asleep on it
                  can you even imagine no ulterior
have you been declared unsafe
                  only music and love
have you planned to drive around it
                  singing a cadenza

Poetry Molly Tenenbaum
sfumato

So they named you Mona Lisa,
as the song goes,
blather on about your smile.

Poetry Erika Michael
  • Follow Belletrist

    Check out our social media to get the latest updates!

    • facebook
    • twitter
    • instagram
About