The boys, in a dream, are beating a green snake with a stick, slipping the limp
rope into the river. Then later they watch their sisters kissing boyfriends on the
back porch. This must be crow weather. The boys know it is a kind of
madness. And that night they watch the posthumous moon on the ridge, then
watch the aneurism of daylight come morning appearing at earth’s edge.
And their bodies hold the scents of primitive underarms and salt. Always
they exist in their skins, and their bones, hidden, become a mask. Come
winter they walk outside into the snow, which makes an empire of erasure,
a beautiful white shadow dreaming its way behind the closed lids of eyes.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 1.