Coffee black, cactus tongue sharp,
and a tin halo makes Louise
Mother Mary of the only
Wal-Mart that can brag
bear spray is their biggest seller.
It doesn’t take an Einstein to guess
Kodiak Alaska wasn’t named after
a cattle ranch in Texas or a chicken farm in Arkansas.
Up in the chill where remote
doesn’t describe an armchair controller,
Louise is the best glitter on ice for miles.
She brags the doll ambulance (make-up section)
is where a lady can paint her cheeks tulip pink
to tease a man into believing she’ll stay longer
than a bikini strut on Homer Spit Beach in January.
No one really knows how Louise ended up in Kodiak.
She doesn’t talk about her past or wink and flirt about the future.
It seems to the locals she’s a unicorn in the rough,
a salty angel with a southern drawl who dropped
her wings in the Wal-Mart parking to hold court
in a kingdom where you can buy a gun and plastic ivy.
©Susie Clevenger 2025
I really don't know how my poetry arrived in a Wal-Mart in Kodiak, Alaska, but my muse took me there. So I did some research, (yes, poets do research), and I found my Louise. :)
