Dara-Lyn Shrager
Bio:
Dara-Lyn Shrager is the co-founder/editor of Radar Poetry. Her poetry collection, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, was published by Barrow Street Books in 2018. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals, including Crab Creek Review, Southern Humanities Review, Barn Owl Review, and Nashville Review. Learn more at: www.daralynshrager.com. and www.radarpoetry.com
King Georges Road
Consider the red fox.A week ago, he slipped into a meadow of ryegrass and Kentucky blue. Now his body slung over the curb shows no signs of injury but is ruptured, spleen-bled. Winter coat of auburnpaws ink-dipped. Creature with a belly so white and clean.What god made more than one of any thing so pristine? Left his body for the carrion crows.
Seeds
It was supposed to be the seasonfor nesting in against the cold but weeks of warm weather spoiled the big orange gourd. The smaller one, a milky white gibbous moon,refused to rot. In its hollow, a kingdom of spider mites gorgedon pulp. By mid-November, the empty eyes were filled with mold. And a toothy smile turned frown then slack-jawed gape. I half-believed the pumpkin would last the winter. That my boy could return to a place where little changes. But time can be best understood by watching chunks of pith collapse into browning grass. Most of the cars that pass by now have green-needled trees tied atop. The seeds shivered a bit when we toasted them.
Rough
In which mess do you eat three squares, my son? At home, it has been a parade of red-bellied woodpeckers, as upright as soldiers at attention.
Let fly the colors!
They rocket upward before landing to split seeds from hulls. After the riotsyou called a truce to travel home and give me a hug. I must have smiled because my teeth brushed the shoulder of your fatigues, leaving me cotton–mouthed.
About face.
You call me rough where I see myself smooth. The first nest of the season failed because I ruined it with a curious broom.What I have learned is birds mark time.
Rest on arms reversed.
Let fly the colors!
They rocket upward before landing to split seeds from hulls. After the riotsyou called a truce to travel home and give me a hug. I must have smiled because my teeth brushed the shoulder of your fatigues, leaving me cotton–mouthed.
About face.
You call me rough where I see myself smooth. The first nest of the season failed because I ruined it with a curious broom.What I have learned is birds mark time.
Rest on arms reversed.
Next Door to Fantasia Grooming Salon
The postmaster lowers an American flag at precisely 4pm. It’s a small display of pageantry; he never misses a day. His ceremony makes me wonder if Brownies still assemble in sashes with badges and brown skorts to pay their dues: clink-clink, clank-clank, golden money in the bank. A circle of good deeds earns a pin. The groomer slips a loop over my dog’s head with her three-fingered hand. Something about lupus and drugs pushed through a port in her neck. My old dog’s eyes are milky with age and though her teeth have long since rotted away, she nips. I leave them to their routine and look through a window caked with fur, at a fat squirrel running the length of a power line. What in this tired corner of town is not a small machine.
