Cutting locust tree saplings
to feed to the sheep who
blatt impatiently. A locust grove
has started and it must be stopped.
Locust has thorns and is good
for little except feeding goats
and sheep. Although I’m sure
the land has a different opinion.
But the land does not have
a vote, so cut
the saplings
will be.
The cost of the coast is the loss
of honest sand, which was host
to myriad lives we’ve failed
to understand. Now there are
daily sweeps of machines
to scrape the bought sand smooth.
You may find old cups or leftover
snack bags there, because shells
are crushed by the beach sweeper
and these shells all came, once,
from another beach from whence
this sand was harvested.
Let’s go to the beach. Look. Here
there are thorns and thistles. All
the things to hurt your tender feet.
Thistles wave their brave purple flags
above their fierce foliage but it does
them no good, cut they will be. Wear
your rose gauntlets when you go
into that field, and boots. The beach
is friendlier, having been made so
by voted decree. The sand is very
hot, however, as no vote has learned
to cool it. No vote could, though
some still believe.
Slip into the water, still a bit cool.
Out there are creatures who
would like your friendship, and others
who care for nothing but their
next meal. Sometimes they are
the same. We might recognize
ourselves there too in the water
when it’s calm. We’ve not yet
drowned nor learned to breathe
in the deep. What do we need
to learn? I often wonder, or if
it is possible at all, to learn,
to breathe.
. . .
Kyla Houbolt is a poet and gardener living in North Carolina. Her first full length poetry collection, Becoming Altar, from Subpress.
https://asterismbooks.com/product/becoming-altar-new-and-selected-poems
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 
An excerpt from Fields of Violence by Julia Madsen
From FIELDS OF VIOLENCE: A TRANSCRIPT OF A DOCUMENTARY ON THE ONGOING FARM CRISIS
FOREWORD
The necrotic underside of the history of the Farm Crisis lives on in the Heartland and in the mind of the landscape, whose pulsating synapses and rhizomes absorb nitrogen nourished by the prairie soil under the watchful eye of high harvest––a time of year of reaping that steals as much as it proffers, withholding the promise of a dream that never existed but did, at one time, grow faith. In another existence. Somewhere between the dream and the dead, blood red tinges the borders of everything. A woman and a man put their hands together like arrows pointed up toward some augury that will never come and when it doesn’t, they forgive the augur. Why? Continue reading “An excerpt from Fields of Violence by Julia Madsen” →
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