Thrush Poetry Journal
  • ARCHIVES
  • SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Patty Paine
​

a place that bears no scar
 
 
1.
 
 
field overgrown with loosestrife/rusted iron ramp/things fall that bend toward light/we said
this/believing nails and salt/devout/there bees/our quietest prayer/god and the boarded-up
door/everything wants named/the shed came down/then we trek

 
 
2.
 
 
we trek
brown and gray
hard and swerve
down the overspill

past the rusted iron ramp
onto asphalt

you call my name
the road’s overgrown
with old light

 
 
3.
 
 
this road
hard and swerve
crows (how they mourn)
sun and cast

abandoned rose-bed
bee balm

among shadows
we bear the weeds
pull blindly

at the boarded-up door


4.



an overgrown field                   loosestrife

our chests full                          of rocks
 

 
half-hidden                              along the rails
 
we leave                                   a feast of nails
 

 
past the graveyard                    crows
 
ocean of loss                            the mounded earth
 
 

sun casts                                  a blinding glare
 
towards light                            we bend




Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals (Accents Publishing) The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), and three chapbooks, including City of Small Fire, forthcoming from Hermeneutic Chaos Press. Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, Gulf Stream, The Journal, The South Dakota Review, and other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal, and Diode Editions, and is Director of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar. www.pattypaine.com



​
​Return to July 2017 Edition