Sadie Shorr-Parks
TWO POEMS

Winter on Earth

In my bruise blue Subaru
with the drooling sunroof

rattling down skyline
drive. Winter on earth

can mean leafless
branching, iced asphalt.

Headache sunlight ahead:
a migraine to match the moment.

Winter can be a dice game
in West Virginia towns.

Boil that water, baby,
the good things have already happened.

Modern Ledas

We pulled up in gold Jettas
and ate up all the other girls.

I brought the sky with me:
a black-on-black bandana.

A swan mingled among us
graceless in baseball cap.

I said, be careful of the transformed:
men untethered from themselves.

Already the lawn had sprouted
crinkled plastic cups, red flowers.

He left with a freshman.
He ran red on the drive home.

Sadie Shorr-Parks teaches writing at Shepherd University, where she is the Director for the Society for Creative Writing. She is the author of HONEY MONTH (Main Street Rag). Her writing has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Aquifer: The Florida Review, Blueline, Cimarron Review, The Hong Kong Review, Lines+Stars, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sierra Nevada Review, Southwest Review, Utne Reader, and Witness, among others. Her book reviews can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books and Southern Literary Review. She edited Becoming International: Musings on Studying Abroad in America (Parlor Press).

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