C.D. Wright
The Ozark Odes
Lake REturn
Maybe you have to be from there to hear it sing:
Give me your waterweeds, your nipples,
your shoehorn and your four-year letter jacket,
the molded leftovers from the singed pot.
Now let me see your underside, white as fishes.
I lower my gaze against your clitoral light.
Rent House
O the hours I lay on the bed
looking at the knotted pine
in the added-on room
where he kept his old Corona,
the poet with the big lips—
where we slept together.
Somebody's Mother
Flour rose from her shoulders
as she walked out of her kitchen.
The report of the screendoor,
the scrapdog unperturbed.
Afternoon sky pinking up.
Table Grace
Bless Lou Vindie, bless Truman,
bless the fields
of rocks, the brown recluse
behind the wallpaper,
chink in the plaster,
bless cowchips, bless brambles
and the copperhead, the honey locusts
shedding their frilly flower
on waxed cars, bless them
the loudmouths and goiters
and dogs with the mange,
bless each and every one
for doing their utmost.
Yea, for they have done
their naturally suspicious part.
Girlhood
Mother had one. She and Bernice racing for the river
to play with their paperdolls
because they did not want any big ears
to hear what their paperdolls were fixing to say.
Judge
Had a boyhood. Had his own rooster. Name of Andy.
Andy liked to ride in Judge's overall bib.
Made him bald. This really vexed Judge's old daddy.
Arkansas Town
Acorn
Back Gate
Bald Knob
Ben Hur
Biggers
Blue Ball
Congo
Delight
Ebony
Eros
Fifty-Six
Figure Five
Flippin
Four Sisters
Goshen
Greasy Corner
Havana
Hector
Hogeye
Ink
Jenny Lind
Little Flock
Marked Tree
Mist
Monkey Run
Moscow
Nail
Okay
Ozone
Rag Town
Ratio
Seaton Dump
Self
Snowball
Snow Lake
Sweet Home
Three Brothers
Three Folks
Twist
Urbanette
Whisp
Yellville
Zent
Lake Return
Where the sharp rock on shore
give way to the hairy rock in the shallows,
we enlisted in the rise and fall of love.
His seed broadcast like short, sweet grass.
Nothing came up there.
Dry County Bar
Bourbon not fit to put on a sore. No women enter;
their men collect in every kind of weather
with no shirts on whatsoever.
Cafe at the Junction
The way she sees him
how the rain doesn't let up
4-ever blue and vigilant
as a clock in a corner
peeling the label from his bottle
hungry but not touching food
as she turns down the wet lane
where oaks vault the road
The Boyfriend
wakes in darkness of morning
and visits the water
lowering his glad body
onto a flat rock
the spiders rearrange
themselves underneath
Remedy
Sty sty leave my eye,
go to the next feller passing by.
Porch
I can still see Cuddihy's sisters
trimming the red tufts
under one another's arms.
Bait Shop
Total sales today: 3 doz. minnows, 1/2 doz. crawdaddies, 4 lead lures, loaf of light bread, pack of Raleighs, 3 bags of barbecued pork skins.
Fred
One of your more irascible poets from the hill country.
Retired to his mother's staunch house
in Little Rock after her death;
began to build a desk for Arthur. Beautiful piece
of work. For a friend. Beautiful.
Drinking less, putting on a few pounds.
Lake Return
Why I come here: need for a bottom, something to refer to; where all things visible and invisible commence to swarm.
for Fred
C. D. Wright (1949-2016) was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas, in the Ozark region that served in many ways as the ground of her imagination. Known for formally adventurous, socially attentive poetry, she published more than a dozen poetry collections, including Deepstep Come Shining (1998), Rising, Falling, Hovering (2008), and the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning One With Others (2010). Her work is collected in The Essential C. D. Wright (Copper Canyon, 2025), edited by Forrest Gander and Michael Wiegers. Wright taught for many years at Brown University and is widely regarded as one of the most innovative American poets of her generation.