living on dayold
bread spread with beans
straight from the can
with a finger
on a bare
strippeddown mattress on a bare
dustcrossed floor
been lightning but no
thunder trails behind
Idol
Like a scarecrow in a cucumber bed, which guards nothing, so are their gods of wood, overlaid with gold and silver.
Letter of Jeremiah 6.70 [apocrypha]
you defend the sprouted gardenfruits in neat sequence. tremble imperceptibly against wound wind. time. cucumbers wax. crows hover in shadow. your faded cast-offs decay. each thread unbinds its neighbor after sun and its descendent, rain. summer relinquishes its heat. to what end, this scaring.
__________
Laura Navratil is from Naperville, Illinois. She is currently an M.F.A. candidate at the University of Alabama, where she is an assistant poetry editor of Black Warrior Review.