Off The Hook, a short poem

Off The Hook

by Beth Achenbach

She smells of perfume and smoke, 

her dangling hook has caught so many people that adore her.

Today she is letting them loose 

as she drives towards the blue and clouds.

The rusty vision of that car, 

her graying hair waving in the wind.

The woman is escaping from this old city. 

A place called home, 

but now littered with waste and nature overgrown.

Wildness spills out of it’s cracks 

as clunky trucks carry their loads, 

dead parts of the city 

dumping at an unknown location 

beyond the concrete barriers.

Brick walls once brilliant with their reddish facades 

now crumble to the touch.

Windows boarded up 

with warped plywood from the frequent rains 

haven’t seen the light in years.

The woman crosses over the city limits 

trying not to be overcome with the heaviness 

that she will never return.

She deeply inhales the new air, 

turns up the old car’s radio 

and tosses her mask 

out the window with the exhalation, 

the promise of new beginnings.

 How it was written:

Lately I've been noticing how anxious I can get. This morning when I was walking to the train station my mind was all over the place. Usually when I catch myself swirling like this I try to make myself be present in the moment by naming things that I see, like a car, clouds, street sign, gum on the sidewalk. It sounds so simple, and it is, I mean the point is to just focus on where you are, and it does help shut my brain off from going places that are not productive. 

Today I was walking by a woman who just got out of a car and I could smell her perfume, and also a hint of smoke so I thought, "she smells of perfume and smoke" and it sounded like the beginning of a song, or in my case, a poem. I decided to try an experiment so I wouldn't forget the line. I thought it would be cool to create a poem out of the things I was seeing on my walk to the station. I used an app called Otter to narrate and then I edited the poem in my iphone notes while I was on the train. The photo is a picture I took of my shadow against a red brick wall, which is one of the lines of the poem.