I35 Creativity Corridor: Cindy St. John, Austin, TX, April 4

Cindy St. John is the author of four chapbooks: I Wrote This Poem (Salt Hill), Be the Heat (Slash Pine Press), City Poems (Effing Press), and People Who Are in Love Will Read This Book Differently (Dancing Girl Press). She lives in Austin, TX, where she teaches at a public school and co-curates a reading series called Fun Party.

Fried Shrimp Emoji

You can’t take a picture of the moon, though we all tried, spilt open in the night 

everything expands to become big enough to hold us. Then we drove home from the 

beach along the hurricane evacuation route and stopped to eat at a 24 hour What-a-

burger.

escape

aperture

True Story

One time I gave Frank Standford’s sister a ride home at 6am, both of us drunk but me 

less so than her and well, it wasn’t that far to drive. To thank me, she told me to pick 

any gourd from her yard and I took an orange one home 500 miles and named it Frank 

Stanford and sat with it on my porch for two years and then I wrote this poem.

eat

your heart

out

Poem

A woman’s bumper stickers reads

I go nuts/for cowboy butts

and it was like tiny angels

gently floated this poem

right down into my cupped hands.

Poem

Travel time to I35 is 7 to 10 minutes

I dictate this

wildflowers never get old.