I lugged an old wicker urn full of pickled steam
down to the river and I turned myself inside out.
The Appalachian Congo rolls in its secrets, older
than clay gone sour. It was time to get cloudy
and grab some rain. All summer long the sun sat
wedged in the sky glowering like a preternatural
throw rug too hideous to ignore. We’d read their
manuals, we knew about zero and the empty set
and how the idea of nothing is something you
can hold, like a green baby made out of smoke.
That’s what the river is for, a river makes it plain.
In the winter, everyone eats, curiosities and such,
like culled hair and rebar. We’re a cross-section
of questionable ciphers, and to ask us anything
taxes the curd. We repeat tropes that we freshly
enough forget and watch them melt into systems
of obsolescence, this catalog of erasures, bodily
inarticulate and grinning with misunderstanding
I lugged an old wicker urn full of pickled steam
down to the river and I turned myself inside out.
Jeffrey Little | Andy’s Deep Green Veranda
Contents | Mudlark No. 77 (2024)