THEY ASK WHY I STAY
by Kelly Madigan Erlandson
I tell them it is the quality of life.
Low crime, affordable housing, good
schools is what they think I mean,
the rope that phrase-makers loop
so harmlessly around our throats
that we think it is a ribbon, dangling
a medal of citizenship or justice
or free speech on our chests.
Instead it is the grasshopper,
sunfish yellow, that my husband
said was big as a mouse, and it was,
awkwardly walking the rung
of the wisteria's ladder against
the peeling paint of the garage wall.
How the neighbor thought to point
it out to us, and how we both looked
when he did, and agreed it was
the biggest we had seen. It is the slam
of wooden screen door into its
frame. Window glass so heavy
it long since broke its cording,
dropped the counterbalance weights
inside the plaster walls, and how we
have to prop them open now with
a can of green beans or a hanger.
It is the grate grate grate of cicada
in late summer so loud we have to
raise our voices on the porch swing.
It is the way the climbing rose
has thrown her arms across
both living room windows, pressing
thorns and blooms against the glass
for our approval. It is that when
she does, we give it.
"They Ask Why I Stay" appeared previously in South Dakota Review. Reprinted by permission of the poet. Kelly Madigan Erlandson's work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, The Massachusetts Review, Talking River Review, CALYX and Puerto del Sol. Her manuscript "Born in the House of Love" won the Main-Traveled Roads Chapbook Award in 2004.
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