Gail Peck

The Cinderblock Duplex in the Sixties

Newly wed with rented furniture.
We’d roll to the middle
of the lumpy bed where I
became pregnant right away,
The smell of coffee
which I loved made me sick.
When I wasn’t nauseated,
I was starving.
We were invited to Rabbit’s trailer
where he served us Chef Boyardee
which I thought delicious.

Did he make it back from Vietnam?

I’d never lived alone and lit a candle at night
until I started feeling sleepy.
I can’t remember what I did all week,
waiting for your weekend pass—
there was no money and I didn’t drive.
You were halfway through OCS
and destined for Vietnam.

Holding you seemed more secure
than I’d ever been, there among
the useless silver flatware—
why did I ever choose a pattern?
On the end table, a candy dish
we received as a wedding present,
which I kept full.

Gail Peck holds an M.F.A. from The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and is the author of nine books of poetry. Her first full-length book, Drop Zone, won the Texas Review Breakthrough Contest; Poems and essays have appeared in The Southern Review, Nimrod, Greensboro Review, Brevity, Cimarron, Comstock Review, Consequence and elsewhere. Her full-length In the Shadow of Beauty will be out in 2025. She lives in Charlotte, NC.