Liam Leslie
beyond animal instinct, I
buffet like a soft bear through the deafening noon
in my hand there’s a rifle called the long-decline
it’s a fuzzy cascade like purple like the mountain
elk as they willow-whisper the chorus of my dead
once every day or so the radio cuts in and the great
silence follows in the car exhaust of morning
cigarettes and my backdrop purpose rises in the east
wandering not in time but of time of a lost boy
in the sedge of adulthood: hold boy abandon boy
corrode boy grace boy be the pulse beneath the prairie
boy be—be the birch before the moss before the beard
be the creak of heaven in a bed of salt-washed dreams
blur beneath the mirage of spurs and ask again why—
why the bourbon swells full with red-fault composition
why detritus rusts beneath glimmering moons ask why
colts await the claw—and forget the pasture
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Image by Anna Shvets from Pexels
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Liam Leslie is a writer, educator, and archival researcher originally from Wyoming. He is currently a Graduate Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, where he is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing. His writing has been featured by or is forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, Ocean State Review, Red Rock Review, and more.
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