local_library Quiet Town

by Steve Klepetar

Published in Issue No. 246 ~ November, 2017

In a town so quiet it might have been

filled with nothing but the hungry

 

dead, three yellow birds hunted worms

on a front lawn –

 

three lithe lemons, or three candy

sticks, moist from the licking

of tongues.

 

When the sky opened, mourning doves

fluttered toward the trees, eyes flaming,

 

wings obscured by smoke.

Before they could spring back into air

 

two small girls gathered

them in baskets woven of weed

and straw and the long, sticky sinews of frogs.

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Steve Klepetar lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, but is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame, Australia, in Fremantle. His work has appeared widely in the U.S. and abroad, and has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He is the author of 12 poetry collections, the most recent of which are A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), Family Reunion (Big Table), and How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps).