USA

hntr524@hotmail.com

Three Miles North
of Foxworth, Mississippi

There is also the resigned mint
of old tin roofs, dull red tractor corpse
laid to rest under the lazy susans and ruins
of a vegetable garden -- the tomatoes now deflated balloons,
each willowy vine crisp with thirst,
long choked by a colony of white dandelions,
sunny heads leaning west in wind.
At the yard's edge is a chicken wire fence,
spokes rusted to earth's clay coloring,
one side flattened
from the black-haired girls' shortcut home from school. Their stained hands
tangle in the brambles
of overgrown mulberry bushes,
each keen puncture dulled with handfuls
of berries, their warm pop on the tongue.
Licking aubergine fingers,
palms wiped on faded dresses,
profanity is a breath on the lips.

Stumble -- imitation
of Yusef Komunyakaa

Bobby smokes
benched outside the Sorbonne,
Seine a pulsing yawn
drawn out feral in dusk.
Last night: two a.m.,
there were cadaverous
beer caps thrown
into the river like gems,
the stumble & drift
of them panned out
into the city like a
search party. The whore,
angry osprey in faux
fur & suede who
tracked oak leaves on
her boots, stayed to hear
poetry, traffic belching under
a fumbled nebulous. Bobby slept,
sunning reptile, mouth
open, wrists inked
aboriginal in shadow,
while she watched.
She hung up
his pea coat, loose thread
ejaculating from the collar,
& left in the morning
with the window thrown wide.

© All Copyright, F Hunter McOwen.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.