Scott Waters

Passenger

Some songs demand privacy

driving alone

to pick up a pizza

Dylan’s latest

grinding and rasping

from the speakers

words red as blood

sharp as spurs

clean as steel

sending my mind

on a thousand mile journey

through boarded up towns

reeking black swamps

to the Mississippi delta

and a guitar picker

on a rotten log

plucking sweet strings

but a passenger

would comment on the weather

and ask me if I were registered

to vote.

Song of the South

Hank Williams

on the radio

busted whine

of a voice

looping honeydrip

guitar fills

each song

a broken brown

beer bottle shard

gleaming under

honky tonk

stage lights

stuck in a pool of

sweet

spilled

Southern blood

Scott Waters lives in Oakland, California with his wife and son. He graduated with a Master's Degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Scott has published previously in The Blue Nib, The Pacific Review, Loch Raven Review, Adelaide, Better Than Starbucks, A New Ulster, Selcouth Station, The Courtship of Winds, Scarlet Leaf Review, The Pangolin Review, Ink in Thirds, and many other journals. Scott's first chapbook will be published by Selcouth Station, and his poem "I Could Be Anybody" has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Sound Hole

I last saw you

in April 1990

you were living in a van

outside Albuquerque

with your wife

and flamenco guitar

complaining about

the greedy bank

that had taken your cabin

in the Sangre de Cristo mountains

this morning I searched online

figuring you were dead

and found numerous videos of you

a grey-headed dervish

with a guitar

and a following of thousands

in one of the videos

you and your wife

sat in what I assumed

was the cabin

you had always sworn

to get back

Indian rugs on the walls

sandy green mountains

visible through a

large window

your fingers stroking

the strings

of a dream

I sent you a message

on Facebook

saying how good it was

to see you alive

when the response came

from your step-daughter

my heart flopped

in my throat