{"id":2575,"date":"2021-11-21T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2021-11-21T06:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/?p=2575"},"modified":"2021-11-10T22:29:22","modified_gmt":"2021-11-10T22:29:22","slug":"the-semi-truck-is-late-to-wed-the-city-by-halee-kirkwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/2021\/11\/21\/the-semi-truck-is-late-to-wed-the-city-by-halee-kirkwood\/","title":{"rendered":"The Semi-Truck is Late to Wed the City by Halee Kirkwood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality<\/em>, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our current guest editor is Tina Gross. <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Tina Gross presents The Semi-Truck is Late to Wed the City by Halee Kirkwood<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tina has this to say about Halee: I heard Halee read this poem in February of 2020 at the Loft Mentor Series reading<\/a>, which was one of the last live readings I attended before the start of the pandemic (it was memorable for lots of reasons, including that the mentors who read were Ross Gay and Douglas Kearney). My father was a trucker and I’m a shameless and incorrigible lover of personification, so this poem made a big impression on me. It’s interesting how it reads a bit differently now, in the context of the late-pandemic supply chain crisis. You can read more of Halee’s poems on their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Semi-Truck is Late to Wed the City<\/strong>
Halee Kirkwood<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lacey train of snow tearing off 
in ribbons, bedazzles the vision <\/p>\n\n\n\n

of anyone with the nerve to come near her
on this day, which is always <\/p>\n\n\n\n

the most important day of her life. 
She bears pallets of gifts\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

bulk potato chips and packing peanuts,
printing paper, rubber traffic cones\u2014all <\/p>\n\n\n\n

the things that make a city 
horny for life. She winds<\/p>\n\n\n\n

her steely bones around interstates, 
cannot fully turn her head to see that rinse<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of blood on that muddy river. 
Always a stiff neck and never <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a dock to rest for good, this time 
will not be different. She casts <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a bitter eye on the morning grackles 
flitting so easy between brick <\/p>\n\n\n\n

and wire, wants to ask every city, aren\u2019t 
I your animal, too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BIO:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halee Kirkwood is a descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and a descendant of a long legacy of public transit riders. A first generation college student and proud Upward Bound alumn, Kirkwood graduated from Northland College in 2015 and earned an MFA from Hamline University in 2019. Other honors include a 2019-2020 Loft Mentor Series Fellowship, a 2019 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Teaching Fellowship at Arizona State University, and both Pushcart and Best Of The Net nominations. Kirkwood is a bookseller at Birchbark Books and currently teaches an introduction to publishing course at Hamline University, where they work together with undergraduate student writers to create Runestone Journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fantasy and magical thinking of personification in Halee Kirkwood\u2019s poem The Semi-Truck is Late to Wed the City will leave you surprised. You might never look at a semi as an object again! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2361,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[519,527,526],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2600,"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions\/2600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyricality.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}