The 2River View | 23.1 (Fall 2018) |
Jonathan Scruggs You have been in here for a long time. and the apple tilted At one end a closed window opens a line of listing fenceposts, and a slow glimmer of sun Now and then, a tern, wheeling You have been in here, and you will be. to sink into yourself, like a plummet easy to become a barren room within where the frame meets the sill and when you put your hand there bleeding in—cold, almost of invisible lilacs. Fall Purge That was the year for the killing. their weak, until each narrow back was plucked and shucked off each beak’s tip with clippers. down the hall. My brother and I stood in the yard, That fall, our father sat the stump again. of their necks, then give death, blow on deliberate blow, blood through the cold grass. My brother laughed, Jonathan Scruggs grew up in South Carolina and Vermont. After receiving his Master’s in Philosophy from Boston College, he moved to Waco, Texas, where he works as a librarian, poet, and fiction writer.
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