Paying the Bills

By her tail 49 has dragged my dad
from the barn to the farmhouse porch.
He rests a minute, stands, dust
of the gravel drive rising
from the gulleys cut by his heels.
She is not stupid; she knows the smell
of slaughter on that trailer. In seconds
she'll kick at his ribs and sprint again,
yank him over the volted fence, away
through the corn to the chicken coop.
Who is more stubborn, more animal?
She in an hour will climb the ramp
in her heaviness, beaten, he in a year
will running, bucking, be hauled
to the suburb, the factory, torn
by his heels from his earth.
But for now, each other's simple danger, they
go tensing, Homeric, bound
in their clash to the dust they rile--
as if such strife could undo
their fortunes, could settle their debts
in the books of men.

--by Amy Groshek

Previously published in Seeds of Fire, Smokestack Books, 2008. Used with permission.

Bamboo Bridge

by Doug Anderson

We cross the bridge, quietly.
The bathing girl does not see us
till we've stopped and gaped like fools.
There are no catcalls, whoops,
none of the things that soldiers do;
the most stupid of us is silent, rapt.
She might be fourteen or twenty,
sunk thigh deep in the green water,
her woman's pelt a glistening corkscrew,
a wonder, a wonder she is; I forgot.
For a moment we all hold the same thought,
that there is life in life and war is shit.
For a song we'd all go to the mountains,
eat pineapples, drink goat's milk,
find a girl like this, who cares
her teeth are stained with betel nut,
her hands as hard as feet.
If I can live another month it's over,
and so we think a single thought,
a bell's resonance.
And then she turns and sees us there,
sinks in the water, eyes full of hate;
the trace broken.
We move into the village on the other side.

--Reprinted with the permission of Doug Anderson; previously published in "The Moon Reflected Fire" by Doug Anderson, Alice James Books, 1994 and "Seeds of Fire," Smokestack Books, 2008.