Coach Taylor touches Mrs. Taylor’s thigh under the bleachers. Half of Texas carries a purse made out of guns. The other half drinks Lone Stars in the alley behind Buddy’s car dealership where Buddy Garrity keeps his side piece’s side piece. Jason Street wrestles a shark seventeen kilometers off the coast of Mexico while Julie finds E. coli in an order of cheese sticks at Applebee’s. Tim Riggins spends a week pretending to be a virgin. It doesn’t go well. Lyla Garrity plants republicans in her Bible. She goes to Emory instead of Vanderbilt, though no one notices. Sometimes when Landry is walking down the street and staring at gravel or grass or track four of Slanted Enchanted, people think he’s Matt Damon without the Photoshop or Instagram filters. Two percent of the world’s population disappears, but that’s a different show. Clear eyes, a hyphenated regret. Jason Street wakes up next to a wedding cake. Smash Williams stops talking about himself in the third person. After Julie leaves him for an architect, Matt Saracen drops out of the Art Institute of Chicago and moves to New York City to get an MFA at the New School. Coach Taylor wears his whistle to bed.Mrs. Taylor dresses her accent in another accent.
Leigh Chadwick is the author of the chapbook Daughters of the State(Bottlecap Press, 2021) and the poetry coloring book This Is How We Learn to Pray, illustrated by Stephanie Kirsten. Her forthcoming books include her debut poetry collection Your Favorite Poet (Malarkey Books, 2022) and the collaborative poetry collection Too Much Tongue (Autofocus, 2022), co-written with Adrienne Marie Barrios. Leigh’s poetry has appeared in Salamander, Passages North, The Indianapolis Review, HAD, Reservoir Road,and Hobart. She can be found online at www.leighchadwick.com and on Twitter at @LeighChadwick5.