Audio: Read by the author.
To skim a curdling light
from the blue of dawn,
to slither in the furrow
of a mud-churned wagon rut,
to bellow above warbling
and spit forth, no parched
throat, no red eyes, no dust.
To bless the day without
looking any of them
in the dying canopy dead
but knowing one bald
morning they’ll collapse
in shrieks
with sticks and feathers.
Cal Freeman is the author of Fight Songs (Eyewear). His work has appeared in Southwest Review, Poetry Review, Drunken Boat, The Journal, and Hippocampus. He serves as music editor of The Museum of Americana: A Literary Review.
