Tyler Kline
COCKCROW

Moment: a mother inks the scythe
above her daughter’s breast, a tail
of bonfire licking a skein of braid.
Moment: tractors rake light from crows
and a goat blinks to count a storm.
Moment knives are slid into boots
like lures crossing a tiger-eye lake,
moment hands covered in bees
are pulled into light shaking honey.
Moment: scapes are tied to a gourd,
moment the gourd is hollowed
until thirsty like a drum. Moment
the boy asks which is his mother,
the banjo or storm. Moment the boy
eclipses whatever tower he can find.
Moment: nothing has its name except
straw-paper sun, moment the boy
looks to the sky and begs for another.

Tyler Kline is the author of the forthcoming chapbook As Men Do Around Knives (ELJ Publications, 2016). His recent work is forthcoming in BOAAT, the minnesota review, Spoon River Poetry Review, THRUSH, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Whiskey Island. He is a senior at the University of Delaware and the current Poet Laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Find him online at tylerklinepoetry.com. 

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #13.