Standing knee-deep
in a marsh, I fish.
I wait for fish
to mistake my legs
for branches. I eat
a lot of mice, too.
Sometimes I choke
on a fish or a mouse.
My beak is a hammer
in the cloud casket.
Like I said, I was once
a great bird. I flew
into empty Nevada,
doused each Main Street
with gasoline, built
the effigy of Jeremy
sprouting silver feathers
like ash. Like artemisia,
the desert held me
kindly, like a free
smoke when you’re
about to cut the reins
on some asshole’s
stagecoach.
To be fair, I never saw
a crane in Nevada,
though the mustangs,
those nights, must have
spread seared wings
and above the burning
storefronts flown.
The banker’s assistant
careens off the road—
dies on a fencepost.
I’m sitting at the bar
with my tackle-box,
tying flies to set
in dirty windowsills,
while outside
they convert the gallows
into student housing.
NATHAN SLINKER’s poems have recently appeared in Ninth Letter, Watershed Review, Hinchas de Poesia, and Kenyon Review Online. He was a 2013 Fishtrap Fellow and has received the Thomas Morton Memorial Prize from The Puritan magazine and the Robert Watson Literary Prize from the Greensboro Review. Nathan lives in Tempe, Arizona, and is an MFA candidate at Arizona State University.
