When the streets of Jakin, Georgia converge,
provide escape, the boys become a band
of crows with dandelions for wings. The road
screams because these crows, struck with the urge,
can’t fly, their feathers weightless puffs of seeds.
The road to Jacksonville is just a trick
that teaches the boys of Jakin to turn back,
stay home, shut up, keep their antsy caws
to themselves while Tallahassee, Baton Rouge,
and Nashville, Tennessee turn to pale white
strokes inside their throats, hints of moonlight
given to any stretch of battered ground
or street or dead highway where boys roam,
planning lives they can’t cough up.
The Road
Tara Bray‘s work has been published or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Puerto del Sol, Atlanta Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Many Mountains Moving, Green Mountains Review and Crab Orchard Review. She is in her final year at the MFA program at the University of Arkansas where she holds the Walton Fellowship in Creative Writing.
Poem from Sacred Dirt