Tag: Anders Carlson Wee

Whoever you are, they take care of you. 

Dean leans over and labors the crank-window, 

asking where you need to go. Lillian shows 

how to clean and reload. Tucker. The Lees. 

Savannah shrunk by cancer. Lyle by diet, 

ordering you what he can’t eat. Hands that pass 

the double cheese and hands that steer the wheel, 

a foot floored toward Tennessee, our necks keeping 

Hendrix’s beat. Each morning another warning 

about the darkness out there. Triple murder, 

no suspects. Alien abductions in the Palouse. 

A family gone missing. A family found, 

their organs removed. Each day, against all this 

breaking news, another stranger saving you.

Reprinted from The Low Passions by Anders Carlson-Wee. Copyright (c) 2019 by Anders Carlson-Wee. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 

The wind is in the trees again, and I’m thinking it’s a wonder

the body can move. The way the mother at the Fargo food bank

fingers a can of concentrated juice. The way the line keeps

heaving forward. The way the child tugs the heavy skirt.

My job is to look for the elderly, help them load. Like the guy 

who grew up in Oslo and is still trying to make it to Bergen. 

It’s a straight shot on the train, he says, but you have to be 

in Norway to catch it. I lift his meat and yogurt onto a cart. 

I wait as he chooses nine of the least bruised carrots.

The trunk of his car has the smell of dried flowers, and his 

baguettes fit lengthwise easily. But before I help him lower

himself into the driver’s seat, and before his hands pass over

one another, turning into the northbound traffic, he tells me

I’m young. Tells me it’s spring. Says I should be out of here,

heading for Bergen. I know he’s right. I know he’s 

so goddamn right. I stand as still as I can as he leaves.

Reprinted from The Low Passions by Anders Carlson-Wee. Copyright (c) 2019 by Anders Carlson-Wee. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.