Sunday, November 22, 2020

Stranger by Atsuro Riley

Stranger


They would congregate right regular.
 
 
(In the dirt-lot of the First Baptist
Or along by that abbatoir off the brackcreek.)
 
 
The hot meat of the matter
Being to parse-patch what they’d heard of what she was.
 
 
Marrowwise what she was to them
Was foreign-faced Not natural: Not from here.
 
 
Of no (known) rhizomatic strain nor kith nor kin.
 
 
Word said and word’d spread She’s some flotsam
From that load of ‘those’ what flooded here by boat.
 
 
Say they bought some bait from off her cart—
How they’d pincer-snatch their change like she was hot.
 
 
pink dew-worms I got! fish-eyes & roaches. Live
minnows for cheap. chicken (neck) gristle. no crickets.
 
 
Her (uncreased) neck her every body-part their snack.
 
 
Theirs to eyeball-eat and memorize
To judge; to pass from each to each from mouth to ear.
 
 
Have you smelled the hair on her. Have you
Bagged a feel of leg. Would you
 
 
You could always put a bag on her. Why she all the time
Bansheeing (bent down) dawn-sweeping her dirt.
 
 
Possessed by slingstone fireball-bags of shit they torched her yard.
 
 
(Wouldn’t they congregate
Right regular.)
 
 
By time and ire her rent-house formed a skin of dunt and char.



  

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