One Last Call By Cat Dixon

I need to write—Shakespeare, coffee, cigarettes,

tequila, music, drugs—to make the rain 

stop, to swim in the lake, to plug the leak 

of the first couple chapters. Finally, my story

will be told. Burn all the books.

What should be the ending? 

I grow old—a flawed portrait of an apple-eater,

a deep-rooted healer, a hack, a sham, an ahem,

a chapter one that’s never been written. While

chopping wood, waiting for the weather 

to change, I hum the Lollipop Song.

Where do the stars go?

They splash each other while treading light.

For five cents they’ll give you advice—listen,

you haven’t lived. You haven’t swum

upstream. This is all I am and all I’ll ever be.

They can’t make it back to shore. 

Cat Dixon is the author of What Happens in Nebraska (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2022) along with six other poetry chapbooks and collections. She is a poetry editor with The Good Life Review. Recent poems published in Thimble Lit Mag, Poor Ezra’s Almanac, and Moon City Review.