Scenic Beach Romance on the Prairie
Plainscape dusk, grainy—
copperheads twist in a dead Ford’s snarl,
grill twisted, frame flippt,
edging a wheat field
Exhaust hack & sap sick, green blood of a cane cholla
split alien under your wheels
We load pond junk with holes
A .22 spits empty harm, we laugh & praise
each other’s shot—
We split your brother’s nickt 40oz
We agree it is awful
A hot sky bruises over
we are dark mouths by now
dark mouths & arms rolling each other into clay boys kiln hot
a boom crumples the air from Fort Sill
spooking cattle down the way
clay figures
our size
in scrimmage for war
brave
in lockers
on your thigh
Moonlight splits a face across the pond
One of us it’s-getting-lates &
we tear out to Baseline Road
past the Congregational Church
where we threw horse apples at each other during Bible School
never wanting a moment
alone with someone more than that
like holding
a prayer in a prism
two tone hologram dust
burned into a backcountry shadow—
A Name Back Home Dragged Up in the News
Can’t quite dream you in the face w/o
mugshot fill-in
vague like [picturing a raceme
[[plants
……fluorescence]]
Bracts? Nope gone as you at the Railhead
Friday nights in the infinity of a
[[town’s only]] metal bar
basic sob rituals
of the
Great Plains Cowtown Hades [[but that
you is gone
GeoCities Angelfire .exe no more
extinct like every giant version
of an animal
[megalopithecuerius eurasiaticas]
on the phone mom tells me
they thought they were jogging
past a barbecue the evening you
burned the body
meth heavy
[…]
[…]
[ masked avengers over more
prairie telephone
old ladies always win this shit]
Will I find you in some museum mockup
unjumbled […] [diorama pose
day pass]
folk memory ][ brochure narrative
will I know you then?
Deja Who?
[distance is]
[dear]
I see a million version you
backlisted microfiche
basement compact shelving
… [of me]
hopeless casket before
you’re old
[…]
[[but]]
long after you’re young
Seth Copeland (he/him) edits petrichor and has recently appeared in Dream Pop, Yes Poetry, Heavy Feather Review, Paint Bucket, and Kestrel, among others. Originally from Oklahoma, he currently teaches and studies in Milwaukee. https://neutralspaces.co/seth_t_copeland/