Business District circa 1982
Praise the Cornet five-and-dime,
Rodgers variety for ribbon by the foot.
Praise the clerk with a ’50s bouffant
and red-purple hands
like my hands now.
Praise the mortuary up the street,
Direct Cremation $300
—all the days I drove by that sign.
Praise Inside Scoop, mocha fudge
ice cream. Praise Rexall Drugs,
sleepy Muzak, greeting cards
I spent too long picking out.
Praise Bits and Pieces,
warehouse slumped and slumping,
barn of curtain rods and heavy
drapes: inside that drafty heart
where I was alone.
Praise Kay’s Bar. Anchoress
of Bybee and Milwaukie,
cave of smoke
beckoning my beloved and me:
stay, stay.
Praise Cosmo and the Limelight,
2 AM drunks punching each other
past our front yard.
Praise Kentucky Fried bucket
turning on its axis, red neon
shining through our window.
O night opening up shop,
take me in, I belong here.
O bucket. Goodbye, goodbye.
first published in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) on January 17, 2025
https://ojalart.com/poetry-all-forms-styleseileen-pettycrewbusiness-district-circa-1982/
This prompt is from an (online) elegies and odes workshop I took in 2023 at the Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita, Oregon. https://hoffmanarts.org/ Emily Ransdell was the instructor:
Consider a place that has meaning to you. A place that makes you feel some kind of emotion when you think of it. Maybe somewhere from childhood. Maybe somewhere in your current life. Somewhere profound, somewhere mundane. You can write an ode that sings its praises, or an elegy that mourns the loss of it. You can use the place as a jumping-off spot for a subject you discover as you write.
This prompt inspired me to ponder the business district that was just steps from our first house in Portland, Oregon. I had a lot of angst about being so close to the businesses. But as I wrote, I found myself singing the praises of this place, even those drunks running into our front yard at 2 in the morning. The poem opened up for me at the end. I was surprised by the sadness I felt.
Photo: This is a picture I took in San Gemini during an outing as part of a poetry/art collage workshop offered by La Romita School of Art in Terni, Italy.
What Inspires You
A partial list of what and who inspires me—
Books:
Several Short Sentences about Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg
What Love Comes To by Ruth Stone
Dig and Hotel Fiesta by Lynn Emanuel
Poems New and Collected by Wislawa Szymborska
frank: sonnets and Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood
Poets:
Frank X. Gaspar
Ellen Bass
Joe Millar
Dorianne Laux
Ellen Bass’s online Living Room Craft Talks series
Bio
Eileen Pettycrew’s poems have been published in New Ohio Review, CALYX Journal, Cave Wall, ONE ART, SWWIM Every Day, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gyroscope Review, West Trade Review, and elsewhere. In 2022, she was one of two runners-up for the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry, a finalist for the New Letters Award for Poetry, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Eileen holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Pacific University and lives in Portland, Oregon.
Find the Spring 2026 Issue HERE
Previous NPM 2026 poets
| April 1 | Amy Forstadt |
| April 2 | Annette Sisson |
| April 3 | Beth Kanell |
| April 4 | Bonnie Proudfoot |
| April 5 | Charles Stringer |
| April 6 | D. Dina Friedman |
| April 7 | David Colodney |
| April 8 | Deanna Ludwin |
| April 9 | Eileen Pettycrew |