Erin L. McCoy
Issue 14 · Fall 2014
Campers
By 4 a.m., the summer was
over. Beds swayed beneath the roof
in stacks. A breeze slipped in: the walls
had cracked, splayed open by
a temperate moisture. We never
dreamed: the sun just was our faces,
was. From spelunking to the creeks,
a sworn-shut map: the bound world ours.
Builders we, these first lithe muscles: future ruins
for a march of more, and bubbling
springs: our blood and mouths; these
aqueducts: so ever downward. So
it was, and so no visions
of contagion: hordes
of geese, V’ing south with
shadows on their shoulders; swarms of
leaves — once perched inside
the boundless woods.
Even before, the trees blinked
shadow-summers where the field
stopped short: a line between us
and beasts, who chased
south geese, pinched leaves from
trees, who were uncountable
and patient.
Our Monster
Pope Lick being one of many
strange Knobs gulches—train-trestled, rotting
stringers along ranks of warped boards,
subjects to Master Monster and each soot-
engorged: rust creeps
like lines of kudzu up from roots of soak.
Spongy brains awe past it in their yellow
torpedoes: yellow for what school is
is for cowardly lions, whose fur speckles
along the spine for fear of climbing. But who
sees shadows of a goat-man
is inevitably lying. So that night soaked
hip-high in soot, blind-stepping over Pope Lick gully
far beneath, grass cropped low with goatly teeth, to
un-soften what plummets
if a cool train blows.
Where, along this branch, lodges a goat’s nest
for your baby terrors? Or do these
crawl up your knees like ice
so you trip between two ties
a rust-green engine purring
so very young. Think of all that you will learn.
Figurine work
I’ve come to the barrel of the sea with flocks of geese bobbing on the tips of my fingers
Here now, the icing green village on the brink of a snub-nosed cliff on the island
There we found all the light bulbs were broken, upended, insides pooling to frogbaths
Where the sun trickled out from tips of jagged glass like it was breaking back to sand and gold
I’ve come to the delta of the Mississippi where the moss-thick mud cakes my wrists
I’d gone to the Bornean feast where thick-eyed pygmy elephants bumbled between our knees
I’ve found all things trappable, palmable, explainable, and boxed these
All caught in unnatural postures
Figurine work: bright paint for every polishable corner