Arcata

by Kristen Delmage

This is where we are for now.
The place folds us in, with its wide, cracked streets,
soaked today and crumbling at the edges.
The sky comes as low as the telephone poles,
but doesn't rain.
We know the dogs here, the houses they
belong to, a few of our neighbors.
We give cigarettes to the kids
with dreadlocks in the small town square,
circled by every kind of truck,
each spattered with mud
and environmental slogans
and full of people, young idealists and old ones,
who work all the odd jobs at the Co-op
and the woodshop and the bagel joint
on G Street, where we want to try
something different, but can't,
because the girl behind the counter
has our usual memorized and ready.
So we pay and sit inside and wait
for the rain we know is coming,
the rain that by February will drive us
to sell what won't fit in the truck
and take ourselves away to where there's sun.
Like cats circling the perfect warm spot,
we learn the place before we curl and stay.

Kristen Delmage is the poetry editor of Faultline, the literary magazine of U.C. Irvine, where she is finishing her MFA. This is her first time in print. E-mail: kdelmage@uci.edu