At the Ranch for Troubled Girls

By Lina Stoyanovich

/ First Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Poetry /

The only real currency was knowledge

            of how to french-braid hair.

The med-cheekers traded pills

until they got caught

            and had to wear all red

            & pull weeds

            & be silent for weeks.

There were the runaways

            & the fighters,

the fourteen-year-old junkies detoxing

in the empty cabin

            with the fresh-faced mormon staff,

the anorexics refusing their meals

            till they got put on bedrest,

the cutters breaking plastic spoons

from the lodge.

            We kept our boots

in neat cubbies in the barn, two pairs

each, there was the time Anya stripped off

            all her clothes during dinner & jumped

into the pool—

            they put her on review after that,

            which was their word for isolation,

& kept her there for weeks.

We slept in bunk beds,

            four girls to a room,

no talking at night

            but when the staff inevitably started snoring

we slipped out of bed

to play cards & eat stolen packs

            of dry oatmeal.

There was the girl who got sent

            by the doctor on T.V.,

they’d aired a clip of her chasing her mother

            with a kitchen knife

but neglected to include her mother’s boyfriend

who’d come into her room at night—

            he was drunk,

she was drunk,

            fifteen,

she hit June the staff by the pasture

            so they sent us all into the barn

& turned on music

            to cover up the shouting

& we danced & danced

            all night long.

The liars faked sicknesses, injuries,

            told new stories of kidnappings

every day of the week,

while the kidnapped

            whispered quietly in the dark

at night

to their bunkmates

            the things they could not

& would not yet say

in the light. There were the

trazodone takers

            who’d fall asleep everywhere:

at the table during mealtimes,

on the floor of the school,

in the gravel behind the barn,

            there was a pile of dry dirt

under some sheet metal

            we used to fill up puddles

& firm up the ground by the calves’ hutches.

We carried it by the shovelful,

there were good rakes

            & bad rakes that were missing

half their teeth,

the dog did not bite,

            the cows sometimes did

by accident

if you let them suck on your fingers

            for too long.

The wolf-girl left a mouth shaped scar

            on her favorite staff’s arm,

the pig’s belly dragged on the ground

            so we had to chase her around the barn

each night for exercise—

she was supposed to do three laps

but she screamed so loud

            she usually got away with two.

When the vet came and trimmed her hooves

it sounded like

            she was getting killed.

There was the murderer’s daughter

            who loved to sing

            even though her voice was awful,

& since she maintained her father’s innocence

despite his confession, conviction,

            & the best-selling book about him

            featuring a police report

in which the Kansas City homicide detective

described

            “the bloodiest crime scene he’d ever seen”,

we figured she wouldn’t be interested in hearing

that she didn’t sound anything like a broadway star

            & let her keep dreaming.           

There were the rich kids & the foster care kids,

            the state-mandated and the district-funded,

the suicidal, the kleptomaniacal,

            the drugged-out,

                        the spaced-out,

the truants, the dropouts,

            the drunks, the rude,

the mutes, the selfish,

the biters,

the disordered, the disturbed,

            & the abused.

There was the girl who kept sneaking out of bed

            to go curl up in her calf’s hutch,

& the girl with the FUCK tattoo above her ankle.

Insomniacs,

            the argumentative,

those who disavowed politeness,

            religion, geometry, food,

the door slammers, the fakers,

            the promiscuous,

the governor’s granddaughter,

the pop star’s ex-girlfriend,

the misguided,

            the badly influenced,

the bad influences,

those who had dyed or not dyed their hair,

those who had shaved or not shaved their heads,

the cigarette smokers,

            the partygoers,

the girl who shrunk & shrunk until she could fit

in & out of the doggy-door in her parent’s house,

those who had said too much

            or had not said enough,

the unemployed,

the dubiously-employed,

the self-employed, 

those who’d begun to see

            their place in the world

& refused to come quietly

into it.