from MEADOW OF RUST
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The meadow of rust
We return ourselves always
Grew between orchards
Of equivalent value:
Silver, Apple.
Aquamarine, Apple.
The year is 4000; most
Young children and parents are dead
Or will be dead soon. Most
Prominent industries will sink
Into soil. Along with the rich.
Field mice armies. Dance music
In the distance. Everything
Stable will fucking fall.
Like this rental house with its rotting foundation.
Like this horse with intestines outside its body.
Like this meadow now rusting in wayward light.
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What inside of it
Inside of it what
The thirteen inches of
Bluish cord, stomach
Engorged to be
Surgically removed
For four years
Of Anxious longing
For five years of
Unmedicated sleep
For seventeen years
Of content monitoring
Beheadings cleaved
From the dominant
Narrative.
Under the bed
Yellow fluid poured
Through the boxframe
Cracks
Now look in the puddle
And see thine own eyes
She ate the stuffing
It filled her up.
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Under the meadow
Not knowing where we were
A layer of astroturf
Causing irreparable burns
To flesh, retain this heat
A layer of pellets
A layer of worms
A nest eating itself
To continue growing
A bodiless shepherd
His sockets steaming
There is red within us
An organ of clouds, bio-
Luminescent trundle
Of wagons bearing straw
Under the meadow streams
A modern farmouse
Under the meadow
We hold in our babies
Our nest was made
Our nest was made
Of the red within us
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Marty Cain is the author of Kids of the Black Hole (Trembling Pillow Press, 2017), and www.enterthe.red, a digital supplement. Most recently, his creative and critical work has appeared in Fence, Boston Review, Tarpaulin Sky, and TAGVVERK, among others. He holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi, and currently, is pursuing a PhD at Cornell University, where he studies rural poetry communities and the infrastructure of late capitalism. With Kina Viola, he edits Garden-Door Press, a chapbook micropress.
