Closed

Stuckey’s service station and restaurant
In Little Sioux no longer serves breakfast,
Lunch, and dinner 24 hours a day.
The doors are locked, the shades are
Pulled, and weeds grow from the cracks
Around the gas pumps.
The tourists, headed North for vacation,
And the truckers, carrying America’s
Daily bread, no longer mingle in the
Gift shop while waiting for a table or booth
To open up. The aged, life worn waitresses
No longer feign interest in the stories
Carried from the corners of this land.
Instead, the neon remains dark and dust
Covers the counter, serving only memories.

Mark Pottorff is a retired public educator, who taught H.S. English for ten years before going over to the dark side to become an administrator. Two constants in his life have been family and poetry, and the former is heavily reflected in the latter. His free verse poetry often embodies the human battle between the need to express and release our tenderest moments and the societal pressure to keep it all in as we process the trauma of our lives. Mark has poems in the Gumbo Bottoms Single Pot Still Poets Society’s anthology, A Drop of the Pure (2025) and has published his first book of poems, Around That Old Table (2026), both from Spartan Press.