|||

Playfully Crinkling through the Leaves Fills You with Determination

Out on that not-acre-or-so,
we build a fire & answer no calls
save the goose, the owl, the scarlet
tanager. Me thumbing a beertab, you
echoing an elegance I can’t catch.
I ask how you listen so good. How
you pan this noise from that, the squeak
of a swallowtail from a black ash
creaking on its axis. Hush, you say.

The ground’s beginning to gather
its leafcover. A chill rummages
like a child fisting skittles. I flee
a late-season paperwasp so poorly
my glute blues—an aurora of blood
my body lets go but doesn’t really         let go.

J. Bailey Hutchinson

Twitter: @jbaileyhutch
Instagram: @ohbailey

Screenshot from Undertale by Toby Fox, 2015Screenshot from Undertale by Toby Fox, 2015

Up next Poem: "Deep End Sonnet" by William Fargason I do not know how to say this any way other than I do not enjoy being alive each time I dove from the high dive into the deep end Poem: "Deception" by Jeremy Boyd second guessing illusion is learning weird is good but descriptive is better Twitter: @sp1it Instagram: @sp1it
Latest posts "I've Got Mine: Notes on Neil Young's 'Motion Pictures (For Carrie)'" by Johanna Sommer Three poems by Jenkin Benson Review: Carpet Cocoon by Iceblink "Kathy draws a line" by Will Bindloss Whartscape: A Look Back [Anything for a Weird Life] "The More Broken Someone Seems, the More We See Ourselves in Them" by Justin Karcher spiral poem by aeon ginsberg The Weather Report with Juliette Sandoval [#12] Two poems by Jenna Jaco "Manscape" by Jon Doughboy Three micros by Addison Zeller Artscape: A Look Back [Anything for a Weird Life] Sculpting Golems and Fog Machines Working Overtime: Interview with Anna Krivolapova, Author of Incurable Graphomania "I Knew You When You Aspired to the Biologic Imagination" by Juliette Sandoval "Two Micros: First Shift, Second Shift" by Jess Gallerie "imagine, if you will, that i am dissociating" by nat raum from "In Between Snow and Blossom" by Jacelyn Yap "as Sensationism" by evelyn bauer Men's Recovery Project, or The Pain of Being Pioneers [Anything for a Weird Life] Two poems by Rob Kempton "Lightning" by Jackson Rezen "Where I Fold in Half" by Erin Smith Three poems by Scout Faller "Shark Poem" by Lexie Mountain Two wrestling erasures by Josh Shepard Two poems by Aderet Fishbane What I Did on my Summer Vacation [Anything for a Weird Life] The Weather Report with Juliette Sandoval [#11] "window offerings" by Ceci Webb "Sweet Talk" by Ron Riekki Two poems by Owen Paul Edwards