middle America (Pioneer Road)
|
ransacking waste places our couch cushion gaps
for change for milk my mother says was the only way we as children ever got it that is to say I know the gulf between the rich and poor and we are set have plenty we have nothing to fear your father he is just a worrier refusing too much milk on Christmas morning fearing his throat might fuse shut agglutinate singing tenor in the choir nor too much sweet-bread as this too could keep him from caroling the sweeter bread of life one appetite changed out for another one some hunger is good my sister says on our walk along the road shoulder if there is lack it means there’s something to be had still still yet more blessed are they who hunger and thirst for theirs will be for them there is a future a hunger is a hunger for what’s next the middle hymn this one sung by the congregation too but not a song about his birth instead it praises his apotheosis the earth laid waste to the church triumphant all in glory all resplendency even the morning singing god if god a morning god in Carhartt and steel-toes the cafe’s earliest risers huddle near and listen weekdays to the local pastor outside dark as pines are and lower down the valley timber mills purge particulates put out steam in pink and roiling columns throats in ululation everywhere that frost is found found gold if in earnest it is sought |
|
Kylan Rice has writing published in The Kenyon Review, RHINO, West Branch, The Seattle Review, and elsewhere. He has an MFA in poetry from Colorado State University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in literature at UNC-Chapel Hill.
S. Billie Mandle is a photographer whose work looks at subjectivity and the built environment. Some of her recent projects have explored church confessionals, Emily Dickinson’s bedroom, and convent walls. She received her B.A. in biology from Williams College and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is the recipient of a Whiting Fellowship, an Individual Artist Grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council, and an Artist Fellowship in Photography from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her photographs have been featured in Aperture and Cabinet, among others, and her work was nominated for the Prix Pictet and the Paul Huf award. She is an assistant professor at Hampshire College and lives in Western Massachusetts.