LeRoy Sorenson
Poetry
Main Street Rag published LeRoy Sorenson’s poetry collection, Forty Miles North of Nowhere. His chapbook Railman’s Son will be published in 2021. He won The Tishman Review 2019 Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize for Poetry. He was also a finalist in Naugatuck River Review’s annual poetry contest. His work has appeared or will appear in The American Journal of Poetry, the Atlanta Review, The Cider Press Review, Crab Orchard Review, Comstock Review, Nimrod, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and other journals. He lives in St. Paul, MN.
Hometown
Take my hometown where boys
become drunks and girls become
escapees from bad marriages, too
many children. Take my hometown
where you learn to speak—
shithead, dickhead, motherfucker—
and study, on paydays, lines outside
liquor stores. As a child, I kept a leery
eye out for everyone: the fat
mailman; the holy roller preachers;
my drunk uncles. An eye out for the fast
hand of my father. For the town
drunks, the next day only a gin bottle
away. Dragged out of my mother
at the local hospital, the hospital
with the Jesus Saves signs, crucifixes
in every room. The town a mini-Pittsburgh,
a hole carved out of prairie sludge,
so American the streets burned
my eyes even at night.