Walking In Tall Grass With Violence
After the long winter, ferns uncoil
and a heart quickens in the mud.
Here, where crews sweep
tar across cracked roads,
the dog rolls in a nest of violets.
In the country I left, shots
ring out over a black field. This
morning, a boy’s neck was severed
in the back of a police car. Now
green sap blankets the car and
the trashcan lids. The driveway
fir is full at the bottom, bald at the top.
I wander toward the dark creek bed,
the low wires crossing the lawn.
*“Walking In Tall Grass With Violence” appears in Tall Grass With Violence (FutureCycle Press, 2022) and originally appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
RACHEL MARIE PATTERSON is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. Tall Grass With Violence, Rachel’s debut full-length collection, was released in 2022 by FutureCycle Press and her chapbook, If I Am Burning, was published by MSR in 2011. Rachel’s poems appear or will soon appear in many journals, including Harpur Palate, Cimarron Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, Parcel, The Journal, Thrush, Nashville Review, Redivider, and Fugue. She won an Academy of American Poets Prize in 2012, and in 2019, her poem “Connemara” was selected as a Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize. She now lives in New Jersey with her husband and daughters, where she works for the State of New Jersey.
