“Little T Saw God at George’s” and Other Poems
Interior of George’s in Iowa City, IA. © 2025 Red Danielson.
LITTLE T SAW GOD AT GEORGE’S
The way I’ve been living
I can’t hold the middle.
Found “what do we do without death”
scrawled on a note the same night
this town got x-rayed—lightning so bad
a scientist called it a “runaway breakdown.”
It’s complicated this history because I know
I’m making a mistake when I’m making it,
I don’t have to look back to know
is this the moment
we get on tables or flip them over.
I want to see a little bit of heaven
kicked up behind the bleachers.
I want to have an experience
in a bowling alley, and before I leave,
I’ll wait for them to call me the last angel
of Harrisburg, PA. On the deathless night,
I ask the internet what to think
at the top of a mountain. The best answer:
when you sing you don’t have to remember
to breathe. Ask for something beautiful and
you’ll get an office building emptying itself
out in snow, a small arrow directing you to flip
the note over to the blank-side.
Everything just an imitation of the first dream,
all its sun too bright it’s so possible my whole search
history “how to make your ex”
because I want the internet to know
I’m doing really well right now
now with your brother in Iowa City. Thank god
the interstate was worth the gas money he gave me.
Everyone just weather all around me, it’s fine
you don’t know what to do with something
you can’t break because I meant to give you something
you could hold in your hand. Central Pennsylvania
running through me so sweet, we’re having a moment, I’ll wait,
too late I’m on the table, happy birthday,
I’m sorry I have to sing now.
STILL ROOM FOR GLORY IN A RIVER THAT RISES
Not one for a once-over, never one
for big picture, I love to leave a town
a little in the dark. Every night a test
run for the last deadline I keep, how sweet
the new boys holding their breath
by a cemetery God never heard of.
It’s alright, there’s something to the wheatfields
glittering a bit, something to learn
about prairie economy from a map of rivers
I steal from a suitpocket. Everyone’s got a reason
to drive across Wisconsin before morning,
home only ever a tree breaking
out in bloom right before we all look dead
ahead just long enough to miss it.
As they say, get ready to sing
through the big spaces, you’ll never guess
what happens next: surprise, it doesn’t end
as bad as you think. Before I trace
the last river, I pick out fake prairie flowers
to remember Iowa, always a mistake
to think the angels never show up, so sad
to miss the one wing on a car window
even in cicada season. Iowa, it’s easy to forget
the one moment to live again: right before
I give a good wave to you all,
you are all still here waiting for a song.
–
Note: The modified phrase—“sing through the big spaces”—is from Willa Cather’s My Ántonia.
I’M READY TO DETECT THE HORIZON
Because too many riverboys disappear on you. Because it’s hard to sit down in these wings without knocking over a houseplant. Because no one notices you shine when you’re always in a leotard. Because you draw stars in all the blank spaces. Because all the empty places are filled in by night because night turns everything into horses running through the floodplains. Because there’s always glitter on the dash. Because all you ever wanted was to be a singer at large. Because it’s all fine until you wake up the idea of your mother, because you realize you never knew her at all. Because you were only ever an inland girl. Because you saw an apparition above the Foxhead when Little T took roadturns too quick. Because you need a water. Because someone said everyone from Maine puts their cars on cinderblocks in the yard. Because it’s only ever a cash problem. Because you see “another symbol for death” carved in the bar booth. Because you don’t have to look through a paper-towel roll to make a celestial body out of a dive bar. Because you only think of the loud sound when you see a wing-depression in the dirt. Because you tell everyone you’re not interested in memory. Because you’ve never made it to the second date. Because it’s never your first time for anything when you wear gold lamé. Because a machine said good job, it’s okay to cry now. Because you can’t tell if someone is laughing or crying when you delete the tears from a photograph. Because you love that version. Because you forgot you were the one who wrote it in 2009. Because you first danced at Train’s Quickstop in safety boots. Because someone always has a knife you can borrow. Because you’ve never felt so clothed. Because you imagined you’d see a lake as big as the ocean where the windows would be. Because you can be with the stars only when you’re parallel to the ground, where things always come back to you, your first-ever position in this world, because from this angle, you don’t have to see it to know it’s there.
DEMIGODS OF IOWA
If this is the dark you step into, welcome.
Now everyone stand up and turn to the
minor goddess with a face half-lit by the blink
of a diner sign. We are Iowa-bound tonight
after a coin flip, we are smoking in Perkins,
we are all are doing incredible things
in the woods. Quite complex this gossip
we come in close for, the way you lean into
new boyfriends in the streets. Think of one city
the first time you saw it from a bus window,
picture your friend, the scholar, a little bothered
by all the extra girls whispering in the lilacs.
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s trust anything
that can’t carry a sentence, anything that runs itself
ragged like the first roads that bent wild
before put into a grid. It’s why you should
recover your childhood, emerge from a matinee
a slightly different person. Naturally, there will be sun-
dresses strewn all across the floor, a woman pausing
just when the field becomes a forest, a goddess
called “merely a division of time,” and all of us
a little vexed by Venus who “just woke up like this.”
I would watch the parade up until the last moment,
pink streamers on the sewer grate. I would watch Venus
bike down farm roads with sea-hair. After all, it’s late
empire, and dream luxe is the perfect shade
to walk through ruins. I know what you’re thinking:
too many crows in the sky for us to see
an exploded tree. But in the long pause, I just want to know
what they’re whispering about, how this all sounds
out of my mouth when the crows fall to the ground.
MISSED CONNECTIONS
The ocean is in for 2024, I want the sun
off it even if it’s only 50/50 helpful
to process whatever’s underneath
my own understanding. Very Florida
to never think about efficiency, too busy
being a little opalescent now and then
in a certain light, the moon such a shortcut
to petite thoughts. All around us moms everywhere
not having the best time at pools. This is the day
that holds the whole year, aquamarine
and pink streaked, it’s too beautiful sometimes
to try to contain it a condensed form
because I really do want to live laugh love.
If only we’d send postcards to everyone
who slips into mind late at night
the moment we find them there. If you cut Florida in half
like a large stone fruit, it would be all neon striations,
a tropical bird, a have a nice day bag
in its beak, yellow smiley face so scrunched up
its mouth looks like a mountain range a child drew.
I watch my life a series of motions moving toward
and away from people over and over
like those time-lapse photos of cities at night,
lights blurred, as if everyone watching them is tearing up
thinking about it. It’s partly feeling dead
that Florida autocorrects. So many hurricanes I guess
taking one thing and moving it somewhere else,
asking it to bloom there. I picture them all in a line
turning over perfect rectangles in their hands.
Rebecca Boyle is from China, Maine, and graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with an MFA in poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, New Delta Review, New Ohio Review, and Tupelo Quarterly.