Welder's Smoke: A Poem by Andrew Hudgins

POETRY FEBRUARY 27, 2013

Welder's Smoke

When the light-stunned doe

went stupid, I couldn’t fire,

a furtive scruple that meant nothing

to the blue light that whooped on

behind us, us with two pistols

sliding across the seat. Bobby

slapped the lights o! and gunned it,

slamming into the dark. Prey now,

we slewed through switchback

rollercoaster curves and powered down

dust wallows the law didn’t know

until, breathless among scraped pine,

sassafras, and kudzu, we watched

blue lights split the dark and the dark

heal three times as the spit in our whispers

dried to welder’s smoke—if we were busted,

the acrid taste of our futures.

Around dry mouths, we rolled

the metallic residue of iron, copper,

and zinc fumes, struggling to love it.

The blue lights departed. On moonlit kudzu

we spat, but not bitterly,

the toxic oxides of a harder world,

thinking, once spared the effort,

I could have loved that life.