Wrap Around
The past beckons you inside for dinner.
Empty plates, bone dry. Sink dwellers, they’re called.
Shattered emeralds, isles of starved folk
I’ve never met. Banshee plantation wives,
Painting over scarlet with off-white ink.
Banjo and the fiddle, timeless lovers,
sing about loss, about food, about home,
whatever the word means this time around.
The shape of an island is its reason,
the treason it’s justified and the blood
that waters the oak trees and the cattle.
Corn bread, soda bread, men bred for slaughter.
Charcoal wool keeps me warm on summer nights
when y’all wish the Hunger had gotten you.
Myles Allan is a cowboy, writer, and poet (yes, in that order) currently living in New Haven, CT. His work has been published in Millennial Pulp, hotpoet’s Equinox, and Columbia College Chicago’s Allium. In his free time, you can find him playing tabletop RPGs or collecting vintage Oscar Wilde editions.