“Bainbridge, Indiana” by Norman Minnick

Unsplash image by Red Dot @designfactory

Bainbridge, Indiana

Sitting at the corner of Cherry and Main
in Bainbridge, Indiana, I hear the hum
of an ice machine beside the BP.

A hawk soars overhead, its right wing
missing a few feathers.

Someone has shot five holes in the stop sign,
missing all four letters.

A small, white house sits comfortably
on its half acre, the windows open.
A curtain billows out from one.

There’s no sound but the ice machine
and a few birds somewhere high in a tree.

(originally published in To Taste the Water)

Norman “Buzz” Minnick came of age in the 1980’s punk scene of Louisville, Kentucky, and was the frontman for the influential hardcore band, Bush League. His collections of poetry are To Taste the Water (winner of the First Series Award from Mid-List Press), Folly (Wind Publications), and a chapbook of poems entitled Advice for a Young Poet (David Robert Books). Minnick is the editor of Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century (White Pine Press) as well as Jim Watt’s landmark study of William Blake, Work Toward Knowing: Beginning with Blake (Kinchafoonee Creek Press), The Indianapolis Anthology (Belt Publications), and The Lost Etheridge: Uncollected Poems of Etheridge Knight (Kinchafoonee Creek Press). Minnick lives in Indianapolis.