The Word like two priests, grazing like silk floss trees the thorny uncle’s rose slip into my boxers forget my body give me a smog check i am clean coal a chimney defeated fossils a bark collar the new pope · · · Frame Everything you cannot imagine how hard it is each lady slipper you drew is a dear i killed they call it blood burning do you know what haunts you? i am twelve a shower boils the young men inside i come as often is possible the LA water and power company could be my family business the last castle is an old woman who hasn’t seen you since the nineties and says you did alright also your mother would be proud i made her casket three cedar logs i cannot believe they buried her without underwear
—Submitted on 03/13/2021
Marshall Woodward is the author of Clown Star (Gutslut Press, 2022). He edits the journal Cultural Fan Fiction. Recent poems have appeared in American Writers Review, Brickplight, Aji, and The Indianapolis Review.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
