Genesis, Dismantled

the sun baked arrowheads
into fossils in the soybean clay

the white tail deer leapt
lessons in anxiety

my body recited like a speech impediment
my tastebuds swollen in the V formation
Dad joked was the reason Vanderbilt Football
stepped on the Bulldogs with its hobnail boot
and i said what’s a hobnail boot
and he said a Larry Munson impression

shaking my shoulders the way a father would
paternally rustle a son
putting our eyes on the belltower,
the burnt ruins of St. Mary’s
where R.E.M used to jam rent free

Reveal on the stereo
pine trees, single file plots
a road unnamed because everybody

driving down it knew where they were headed.
Dad went to the deer stand and i went fearfully
exploring that house of typhoid ghosts

knock-knock on a two-foot door that led nowhere
wondering about the death of the portal
in the hollow of the sycamore tree, its image
the antique windows wavered
like the quivering air above boiling oil

ready to fry whatever was once an animal
scratching the velvet off its antlers
on an unlucky trunk
in scope of the shot that rang for acres
pummeling a bruise in the piedmont sky



Reprinted with the permission of the author.