As Girls Leave Attica

by Paul Dickey

As girls leave Attica, arrive from college,
I think of the Sears and Roebuck
color combinations for the fall
and dresses that will need to hold
a press through a thousand cleaning.

I think of nurse’s uniforms hanging
on the lines of southwestern Kansas.
I think of my worn-out sandals,
and sparrows settling on laundry.
Boyfriends once wore in madras

but calls Christ for Simon the Zealot
to be obscure. Mr. Steven’s could you
write a letter of recommendation
to the Hartford Life Insurance Company?
I have a wife and a daughter now.

But I think hard of my wife’s father,
drunk and gray, in out-of-place
in Attica, his sheets numbered,
and nailed his payout to the line,
still with their young girls at home.