In the Beginning

By ALLISON ADELLE HEDGE COKE

Chrome glinted  
sunrise,      bumpers, rear views. 

Backside of cars parked    full of sleep  
just an hour     past.     

Now, everyone’s shaken loose,  
switched clothes if they could.  

Rows begging to be peopled 
with whoever,     run end to end,  

side by side,     long as leaves let 
green grow,         hand over hand. 

 

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s eighteen books include Look at This Blue (National Book Award finalist), Burn, Streaming, Blood Run, and Effigies III. Following former fieldworker retraining in Santa Paula and Ventura, California, in the mid-1980s, she began teaching and is now Distinguished Professor and Mellon Dean’s Professor at UC Riverside.

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In the Beginning

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