They would congregate right regular.
•
(In the dirt-lot of the First Baptist
Or along by that abbatoir off the brackcreek.)
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The hot meat of the matter
Being to parse-patch what they’d heard of what she was.
•
Marrowwise what she was to them
Was foreign-faced Not natural: Not from here.
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Of no (known) rhizomatic strain nor kith nor kin.
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Word said and word’d spread She’s some flotsam
From that load of ‘those’ what flooded here by boat.
•
Say they bought some bait from off her cart—
How they’d pincer-snatch their change like she was hot.
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—pink dew-worms I got! fish-eyes & roaches. live
minnows for cheap. chicken (neck) gristle. no crickets.
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Her (uncreased) neck her every body-part their snack.
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Theirs to eyeball-eat and memorize
To judge; to pass from each to each from mouth to ear.
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Have you smelled the hair on her. Have you
Bagged a feel of leg. Would you—
•
You could always put a bag on her. Why she all the time
Bansheeing (bent down) dawn-sweeping her dirt.
•
Possessed by slingstone fireball-bags of shit they torched her yard.
•
(Wouldn’t they congregate
Right regular.)
•
By time and ire her rent-house formed a skin of dunt and char.
—Atsuro Riley
Atsuro Riley was brought up in coastal South Carolina. He lives in San Francisco.
