I don’t feel so far away. At night, I dig
a shallow pit the length of my body and lie down in it.

If the creek is dry, I hide in the 3rd chamber of the bridge and wait
for squirrels or parrots

to suddenly die from their nests on the light poles.
This is rare except when it storms.

When it does I want to
sleep in the blossoms and not the bent assembly of my tent.

I wrap remnants of rags around my head and imagine
trenches and comets or nothing moving at all.

I pray out loud to my mother who is kind
and alive in the country.

I let her know about the water and the food
I made for mouth until I’m asleep.

I say, you take the soup and the bread and the meat.
Hold it above the table.

I’ll take the forks and the knives and the spoons
and hold them to my chest. 

Yesterday, I sat in the creek bed and waited,
called my arms elegant in rain and said again,

All right, sing to whatever you’re singing to today,
mother.

Summer is ash and blind and plagues of all
insects rising from deep holes in the dirt.

I fill them with fragments and shoelaces, fire
and whatever I can make with the charging grass.

I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes.
The animal was alive. My friends were cruel and starless.

I still dream I am in a field
digging for snakes and wringing them out in the air.

Every day I stack rocks and forgive one thing.
Every day I stack rocks and forgive one thing.

Skyler Osborne was born in the Midwest. He received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. His work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Best New Poets, The Colorado Review, No Tokens, and elsewhere.

Zoran Pungečar (digital collage: 2016-10-09, detail) is a graphic designer and artist based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is ½ of micro publishing project Look Back and Laugh and 1/6 of riso art collective Riso Paradiso. He likes punk music and riso printing.

This poem was originally published in Salt Hill 44.