By Jordan Sanderson
There was no making sense of the pine fall.
The whole yard laid out like
A fleet of log trucks collided
With some Humbaba of the Loblolly
Forest. Even though the house stood
Unharmed, we couldn’t enter it, the turning
Of the doorknob more than we could bear.
The scent of pinus taeda pulped the air.
We breathed deeply. We could not breathe
Deeply enough. We rubbed our fingers
Against the grain of exposed trunks,
Longing for a splinter. We tongued rings.
A stunned turkey looked at us as if to gobble.
Locked inside the world, we cobbled a door
From flakes of bark, but it was too large for us
To enter. We peered through a beetle hole
Just in time to see a barge hauling a new river
Through the hospital in which we were born.
Jordan lives near the Gulf of Mexico. His work has appeared in Phantom Drift, Fiction Southeast, Mockingheart Review, Better, and other journals, and he has published two chapbooks, The Formulas (ELJ Publications) and Abattoir (Slash Pine Press).
Twitter:@docsanderson
