April Michelle Bratten
Nipping at Heels
The mud was six inches deep,
sorrowful,
shy,
and yet,
it still drank from our ankles.
The fox,
the bobcat,
the wild watched
as we invaded the valley with our foreign shoes,
and I said to him,
It's the violins behind the thing.
It is always the instruments
behind
the thing,
and we kept walking until the owl we could
never see
grew fresh and important,
and he laid me down inside that mud
like a fork
meant to be beside the plate,
and he told me,
You always think of the best lines
when no one is around to hear them.
April Michelle Bratten is a writer currently living in the sad plains of North Dakota. She has had recent work published in Southeast Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, and San Pedro River Review. Her first collection of poetry, It Broke Anyway, is now available from NeoPoiesis Press (http://www.neopoiesispress.com). She co-edits the online literary journal Up the Staircase Quarterly (http;//www.upthestaircase.org).
Return to November 2012 Edition
The mud was six inches deep,
sorrowful,
shy,
and yet,
it still drank from our ankles.
The fox,
the bobcat,
the wild watched
as we invaded the valley with our foreign shoes,
and I said to him,
It's the violins behind the thing.
It is always the instruments
behind
the thing,
and we kept walking until the owl we could
never see
grew fresh and important,
and he laid me down inside that mud
like a fork
meant to be beside the plate,
and he told me,
You always think of the best lines
when no one is around to hear them.
April Michelle Bratten is a writer currently living in the sad plains of North Dakota. She has had recent work published in Southeast Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, and San Pedro River Review. Her first collection of poetry, It Broke Anyway, is now available from NeoPoiesis Press (http://www.neopoiesispress.com). She co-edits the online literary journal Up the Staircase Quarterly (http;//www.upthestaircase.org).
Return to November 2012 Edition