ISSUE 6

Harrison Hamm​

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Reaper Tends the Garden

—as sweetwater past thorn.
Crushed autumn in the bone-knuckle, sprinkled
over meadow. Over brook. And swimming.
Black ducks bicycling webbed feet under the surface.
And nightcome, always forgetting to put the moon
back in the tattooed sky. And oil. And ice castle collapsing.
Still: Irises—anemone—buttonweed—bleeding heart—
pink as cardstock. As wound. Who said no god to witness?
What was fog? Loss in totality. Cemetery clouds sifting, shifting
soul behind river-spray. The mouth agape again, just as snowflakes
seed the tongue. Grayscale before the filled-in vision. And sapphire.
Aluminum fish. Guitar strings. Unfettered canopies like undershirts
coming off. And rain, always rain and missed appointments. Starfall hitting
the wet dirt floor. Scarcity of cotton. And his robe-rippled shadow extends
as vultures. Stormfront bruising dark into petals. Sickle kissing each rosebud.
Mowing the pasture with my dad’s bush-hog. Kind of looks like him.
Has that unholy look in his eye—

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