Sunken Garden Poetry Festival

Emily Madsen Photo: Hill-Stead Museum

Requiem for judy the bus-driver

bigboned, and hands like frying pans,
covered with those fingerless gloves.
her hair was a mass of rusty red and grey curls,
frizzy ringlets that stuck out like broken wires.
she spoke with a slight curl of her lips,
peeled back from her long horse-teeth,
baring them with each syllable.
It was always, "now sit down and keep
your feet out of the aisle" in a
voice like a raw potato.
I lived in constant fear,
for if I left my bus-window
open in the morning,
she would track me down and
make me stay on until the end of the
afternoon run to close the rest of them.
I could not move the windows with my six-year-old hands.
Autumn was merciful, but I sweltered beside those windows,
shut fast in the spring.
Once she screamed at me for
putting finger prints on the foggy pane during snow season.
Seeing my distress, she called me sweetheart,
and kissed my cheek sloppily as
I passed by to leave the bus.
I had been crying, and her gloves
held my wet cheeks in a wool vise, turning my head
in the glare of the windshield's reflection
to deliver the clout from her lips.

My cheeks stung with salt,
and she smelled like apples.

Emily Madsen
Used with permission

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