Alabama Girls

We’re making trouble in the middle
of the night. Drinking dark stuff, arching
our backs in the redneck woods.
We’re sitting pretty in white pressed
linen on church pews. Front row,
singing hymns in tongues you never heard.
Touching our bodies in the front seat
of your car. Always talking ‘bout I’ll pray
for you. And we will, with heavy breath
like a swinging ax. Make a picture.
Make us last.                

                        We never make it past sixteen,
face slapped sideways on telephone poles.
Missing. Wanted. Strangled. Set ablaze. Stuck
in the infinite loop of the damned. In this closed loop
of a place, there’s nowhere to go. We want out
of this rewound town, so tight the tape might
snap. Take us with you, rolled limp in the bed
of your truck. Buried just beyond the county line.
We belong right where you left us. You knew us,
know us, are us. Remember our names, doubled
and stuck in your mind. There’s only one way out. 
This is God’s green earth and we
are his precious children.

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McLeod Logue is a poet from Birmingham, Alabama. She received her MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she taught creative writing. Her work has appeared in The Nashville Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, The Shore Poetry, and elsewhere.