Mown hay to the sun
after rain. Otherwise
you’ll find it
in the middle leaves
of bales, the mold
that sickens them,
that cures them.
The tangle of things,
the horse thistle
in trumpet vine,
Arabian roan doubled-over,
retching, dying
in a municipal park.
The non-local stertor
of its death. Where the rain
doesn’t fall, it slashes
across the plane of plains
where ungulates look
like windblown sticks
in a field, inviting us
to believe any
recombinant number
of impossible facts.
Cal Freeman (he/him) is the music editor of The Museum of Americana: A Literary Review and author of the books Fight Songs (Eyewear 2017) and Poolside at the Dearborn Inn (R&R Press 2022). His writing has appeared in many journals including Atticus Review, Image, The Poetry Review, Verse Daily, Under a Warm Green Linden, North American Review, Panoply, Oxford American, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Advanced Leisure. He is a recipient of the Devine Poetry Fellowship (judged by Terrance Hayes), winner of Passages North's Neutrino Prize, and a finalist for the River Styx International Poetry Prize. Born and raised in Detroit, he teaches at Oakland University and serves as Writer-In-Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Detroit. His chapbook of poems, Yelping the Tegmine, has just been released, and his hybrid full-length collection, The Weather of Our Names, is due out in 2025.
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