Tennessee Homesick Blues

Emily Moore

Girls’ Night at Doc Holliday’s:
We tossed two shots back, wore high boots.
With Dolly on the jukebox, Lane and I forgot to fight.
She pinned me to the wooden table.
Cheap lamps swayed above
her hair falling in mine.
In those days there was no one else.
We shattered glasses, licked up whiskey spills,
knocked pay phones from their cradles
all the way up Second Avenue,
nothing but damage in our wake.

Emily Moore is a poet and high school English teacher. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the CUNY Graduate Center and a BA from Princeton.
Originally published:
April 1, 2008

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