HYMN TO MAGNOLIA
We rebuilt the barn in seven days. Echoes of shotgun blasts explode like early fireworks on the Fourth (or the First). Oh, lovely Scenic Drive, remember me! And the spring frog, too early, flattened in the driveway; the gray-haired possum fallen trees and debris, the giant catfish skull in the yard–on whose hook do you pine? Em-eye-es-es, Eye-es-es, Eye-pee-pee-eye; you’ve picked your flowers; now leave.
MARATHON, UNFINISHED
An accident in the making of the being (just being) never answering why this is not your dialogue but, Do you have a right to be here just because you breathe? A constantly refreshed reality to critique–Mother, father, child, bowl–maybe you didn’t hear the gun, but the race is now, and somehow in this post-atomic yearning for sincerity, the you and I get lost in the rubble, but there is nothing more to wish for. Just extract each organ from the Y, in ascending order, every unearthing closer to the heart, red ribbons, pancreas, two kidneys–flush; from the beginning. Something true, something glue.
MOUNTAIN CLIMBER’S REVENGE
My enemies, strong and numerous, lack in organization; post-contemporaries form teams and fight for a small piece of ledge, but this is a left-handed mountain, and all this time they’ve been cutting through these ropes and threads using the wrong scissors; diligently to build a Trojan Sisyphus in my temple mound; I stuff them in adobe niches, broken tools and bone fragments, before the archaeologists arrive to pay me for the land and these stubborn relics, my opposable spade.
About the author:
Miranda Merklein grew up in Santa Fe, NM. She works odd jobs and is the publisher and editor of Journal of Truth and Consequence. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, Iron Horse Literary Review, Pindeldyboz, and others.
