Nicholas Molbert

On Showing You My Hometown for the First Time

Let’s follow the funk
                        of diesel and washed-up
            redfish carrion to the coastline
                                    of this town.
                                    The number of people
            here who know
                        the definition of petrichor
is exactly you. Petrochor,

am I right? The cattails submit
                        to the emission-whiff of the wind.
            They bow to the refinery
                                    as if to they pay their respects,
                                    pay for their slow death.
            Men get cut a good check
                        to work at the shop there
but come out years later

with crude slang and chronic ailments.
                        The gasoline coming
            from the refinery powers
                                    planes that allow
                                    my parents to smoke
            their den with vetivergrass vapor.
As you can tell, this town is obsessed

with elsewhere. There is
                        a boutique named Else
            Wear just over the horizon.
                                    And in the same direction
                                    is my elementary school
            where I hacky sacked through
recess and swung from an old

wooden derrick-turned-playground.
                        In the spirit of elsewhereism,
            the town calls that derrick
                                    The Steiffel Tower.
                                    They just hopped over
            the Atlantic to France, forgot
                        the fact that the Tower
was based on a copy of the first inland 

rig only a handful
                        of miles away in Jennings.
            An old farmer stuck it right
                                    in the middle
                                    of his crawfish ponds.
            Those little lobsters didn’t give
                        a shit either.
They kept on keeping on

just as everybody else does
                        on this coast. Tomorrow,
            we can oops over the fence
                                    into the playground
                                    and goof off
            on the makeshift bars.
                        We can kick a homemade
hacky sack made from short

grain rice and a crew sock.
                        Let’s come back at sundown
            when the horizon glows red.
                                    Let’s play hopscotch
                                    in the grid made
            from the day’s leftover sun
                        as it shines through
the trifle of this derrick.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Originally from the Louisiana Gulf Coast, Nicholas Molbert now lives and writes in Cincinnati. His chapbook, Goodness Gracious, won Foundlings Press's 2019 Wallace Award. His poetry and prose has been published in or is forthcoming from Birmingham Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, DIAGRAM, Mississippi Review, Missouri Review Online, Ninth Letter and Pleiades among others.