Behind our parents' redbrick rancher
where they will live forever,
my brother and I skirt the tree-fringed field
where we as children flew kites.
November sun tilts towards evening,
kindles the chinaberry trees and rolled hay bales,
deepens deer tracks and the churned dirt
of wild hogs rooting.
Steve points through pines to a weed-choked rise,
cemetery abandoned two centuries back,
markers long rotted.
He's into green; he wants to feed the earth.
I comb the sky for buzzards,
spot three, narrowing their orbit.
"A good day to die."
For me, smoke signals, a scattering,
here in our many footprints.
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Issue 57
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Editor's Note
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Poetry
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Fiction
Issue > Poetry
Ashley M Havird
Ashley Mace Havird's chapbook, Dirt Eaters, was published by the South Carolina Poetry Initiative in 2009. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Southern Review, Shenandoah and Southern Poetry Review. She lives in Shreveport, Louisiana and was a 2002 recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship in Literature.Poetry
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