Jill McDonough

Poetry

Jill McDonough’s books of poems include Here All Night (Alice James, 2019), Reaper (Alice James, 2017), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), and Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008). The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, NEA, NYPL, FAWC, and Stanford, her work appears in The Threepenny Review and Best American Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at UMass-Boston and offers College Reading and Writing in Boston jails. Her website is jillmcdonough.com.

 

Drunk Driving

Drunk in the cab, I joke about drunk driving, how I’d be fine with a little meth to sober me up. Just a bump to get me up and running, I shrug, and I could totally drive. This is hilarious, impossible, a joke that leads  to gratitude we're not in jail, how Susan thought pruno was Pruneaux. I say I drive better after a couple drinks. Loosens me up, the stupid shit people actually say, and sometimes mean. Pauline asks why I’m grateful I’m not in jail. Because I've seen it? I’ve also seen a popcorn-white apartment, Salt Lake City; seen green suburbs where I don’t drive kids to soccer, jazz dance class. All these places you can meet great people. That which does not kill us makes us cool. But for centuries, slutty ladies who did whatever the fuck they felt like often found themselves in jail, or beat up, dead. I feel for everyone in prison, even that asshole murderer who talked too much. But I feel like he deserves it. For being rude, taking up class time.  The ladies who killed somebody, driving drunk, will break your heart. They sag under the weight of the bodies they hit. I never drove drunk: my dad’s a surgeon, used to wake me up when I was little, take me to work so I could hold teenaged drunk drivers’ hands while dad fixed them up and they cried, asked, kept asking what happened? What happened to my friends?