American Life in Poetry: ‘Ronnie’s’ by Nick Norwood

Nick Norwood’s most recent book is “Gravel and Hawk,” published by Ohio University Press. This poem has sorrow at the top and happiness at the bottom, which means there’s a lot of living in between. It’s from the quarterly journal Five Points. Norwood lives and teaches in Georgia.

Ronnie’s

Dad dead, Mom—back in the bank, tellering—

started dressing in cute skirts and pants suits

she sewed herself from onionskin patterns

and bright-colored knits picked up at Cloth World.

Got her dark brunette hair cut in a shag.

And she and her single girlfriends from work

on a weekday night would leave me to “Love

American Style” or Mary Tyler Moore

and step out to hear the country house band

or now-and-then headliners like Ray Price

and Merle Haggard. Mom’s blue Buick Wildcat

shoulder to shoulder with the other Detroit

behemoths in the dim lot around back.

Wind skittering trash along the street. Bass

notes thumping through the sheet-metal walls

and the full swinging sound suddenly blaring

when a couple came in or out the door.

I know because I’m there, now, in the lot,

crouched behind the fender of a Skylark

or Riviera, in the weird green glow

of the rooftop Ronnie’s sign, not keeping tabs

on Mom, not watching out, just keeping time

with the band and sipping a Slurpee

while she dances through this two-year window

before getting re-hitched, settling back down.

Just twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old,

looking pretty, having the time of her life.

Poem copyright 2015 by Nick Norwood, from Five Points (Vol. 17, no. 1, 2015), and reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.