Unincorporated

“Unincorporated” was published in the American Journal of Poetry, January 1, 2022.

Barnum, unincorporated
shoulders a bend
in route 171
backed by steep hills

crowded with
chokecherry
blue ash
jack pine

a thorny, buzzing prairie
stretches opposite the road to
the mud bank
brown river

almost a town
one general store
abandoned
windows and corners
swathed in web
jars and cans
U.S. one-gallon jugs
entombed in silt
ancient notices
yellow, brittle
litter the floorboards

three or four houses
buckled
sloping
junk in the yards
one by the road
white
pallid
luminous
shifts in shadow
of the hill’s lee

a girl in the
upstairs window
rocking, mouthless
the sky xanthic, darkens
flocks of blackbirds rise
like darts from the scrub
wheeling
across the wan sun

her eyes wide
fixed, imploring
collide indelibly with mine
as I ride East