A poem by Rodney Jones
…
From the bootlegger’s shantyat Five Points
to the swing sets in the Falkville schoolyard,
the road went underwater, which made
our twice-a-day bus rides through the bottoms
dead ringers for those goegraphy tests
when I’d wondr if I’d studied enough
guessing the brain’s good dong might send up
Utah when I’d sent down for Nevada.
This was also the biblical road,
flood-fleshed with bedwettings and cold-sweat.
It clarified distinctions between tests:
fake true-or-false was wilting mimeographs;
real true-or-false was marked on the rail
where a neighbor girl, returning from a dance,
had flunked the bridge and fueled a sermon,
Geography turned to philosophy if we stalled,
and while the engine turned, some prayed,
some leapt up jeering, and would be chastised
mildly and then forgiven. Most tolerant of men,
Fred Jenkins, the shell-shocked veteran, drove.
The Rose 