Betty Lonely
VIC CHESNUTT
Betty Lonely lives in a duplex of stucco on the north bank of a brackish river
Her ears omit the noise from a nearby airstrip her mind floats beyond the snapper boats
Betty Lonely, her green eyes are roughly staring at a point through the sliding glass door
Her heart lives over a drawbridge
Her brain is wet like a throw net
Betty Lonely, she will always think in Spanish
Though I know her Spanish black hair
It will start to fade she sunk her past
Out in the surrounding salt flats
Her maidenhood was lost beneath the Spanish moss
Betty Lonely just talks to her grandbaby
Everybody else she blots them out
But her words stick like a flounder gig her dry laugh is like a gaff