Small Town Next Door
By Nathan J. Reid
Midday broadcast about a missing young woman and the baseball game.
Bees buzzity-bump against air-conditioned car windows. Plastic flowers
bathe in dusty vases. Eighty degrees, partly cloudy, just like in Main Street’s
muralized reminder of what river life once was, old brick-faced town
loud and edgy as the chewy slang pouring from bucket candy stores.
There are no minnow tanks inside Crazy Ralph’s Discount Center
but five bucks will buy a fishing license and two strips of venison.
Steering wheels mumble and click through new roundabouts. Sourball wrappers
crinkle beneath floor mats. Grandsons dream of grilled cheese. And today’s ninth
inning is sponsored by the local church, where the young woman’s parents are
members, who say their daughter was last seen on the town’s walking bridge,
taking her new camera for a spin.
Couple times a year the riverbank parks overfill with rain, lapping hiking trails
up at hidden corners. It is said that people and paths have previously gone
missing, that a few souls know where to find them. It is said the shoreline used to
have ten more feet.
Nathan J. Reid is n songwriter, actor, and poet residing in Madison, Wisconsin. He serves on the boards for the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, the Council for Wisconsin Writers, and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. His work has been published in several journals and anthologies, translated into Chinese, as well as performed for both the stage and radio. He is a former senior editor for the Wisconsin Review, former guest editor for Bramble Lit Magazine, and has two poetry collections published by Finishing Line Press: Thoughts on Tonight (2017) and Persistence of Perception (2020). Learn more at nathanjreid.com.
Last Lines, Roundabouts, and Omro, Wisconsin: An Interview with Nathan J. Reid
Reonna Huettner: The poem “Small Town Next Door” has crisp imagery and fun word choices. What inspired the piece? What was the process like?
Nathan Reid: I had been thinking one day about the changes that happen within small towns over time and the poem grew from there, composed of images from the past (bucket candy stores and the price of a fishing license) and the present (particularly the roundabouts). I have been to and through a lot of Wisconsin towns and some have rather intriguing atmospheres about them that get the brain storming. I was drawing on feelings of peacefulness and serenity, but also boredom, isolation, nostalgia, and a bit of mystery.
RH: Something that I really loved about your poem was the subtle yet eerie feeling coming from the missing young woman and those who also seem to disappear within an average town. What feeling were you hoping to evoke in readers as they read your piece?
NR: Just that: a certain sense of eeriness. While crafting the piece, it was a struggle to be subtle—to show, not tell—but I’m glad I didn’t try adding more. The sinister vibe is meant to blend in with everything else rather than stand out. I hope readers like yourself are able to tune in to the mystery, investigate some of the hiking trails and flooded corners floating around their minds, and maybe even come up with their own conclusions about what happened to the girl.
RH: As someone who comes from a small town, were you pulling experiences or settings from a small town you knew or lived in?
NR: Many of the images are actually based on the town of Omro. My family lived in Oshkosh, we had land in Rushford, and Omro is really the only town between those two. Crazy Ralph’s Discount Center was an actual shop on Main Street (long gone now) where my family would stop and us kids could get a few toys. The walking bridge is also pulled from Omro, as is the mural, and I used to always order a grilled cheese sandwich from the Main Street restaurant. Little mosaics of other towns exist within the piece but Omro provided a great template from which to build.
RH: Your last lines constitute SUCH a powerful ending. “It is said that people and paths have previously gone missing, that few souls know where to find them. It is said the shoreline used to have ten more feet.” Do you feel as though last lines are the hardest to write because of the impact they attempt to leave? If not, which section of writing do you think is the hardest?
NR: Paul Valery once said, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” My goal when writing a poem is to make it strong enough so that, when finally abandoned, it can survive on its own. I think the hardest part for me is figuring out when I’ve reached that point. So rather than the literal last line of the poem being difficult, for me it’s the last created line that is the challenge—sometimes that ends up being an opening line or a random line in the middle somewhere—but the line that completes the idea of the poem is often a puzzle to be solved. If I don’t get to that point, it means the poem isn’t done with me yet.
RH: Lastly, are you working on anything else or have future plans for publishing pieces?
NR: I have five different poetry manuscripts I’m working on right now, including an (at the moment) untitled horror collection, a sociopolitical collection called In Search of Edward R. Murrow, and a pseudo-religious collection titled Gospel of an Atheist. I’m also a songwriter, actor, director, videographer, and am in the middle of transitioning from a job in health care to a career in the cannabis industry, where I will be able to use my creative skills to help grow a new dispensary. I will also finally have time to finish all the manuscripts and other projects I had to put on hold when the pandemic hit—I am very much looking forward to that.