Barbed Wire Fences and Billboards

Anne Graue

______I._____As the crow flies

_______________dissects wheat sorghum
____________________milo for the pigs
_______________spots fox and coyote
____________________screeches over water
Hail Mary
signs glint
blue
and white
on a barbed wire fence

_____II._____All around Robin Hood’s barn

___________Take Highway 69 around to 160 to 59
___________Stay_____on the beaten path
___________if you blink
you’ll miss
_________________________the wide spot
______________________________in the road
the pro-life
billboards_______fetus blood stark on white

____III. _____Sure as shootin’

_______________you’ll end up in a ditch
_______________in Bumfuck Egypt knee deep
_______________in water
catfish and
crawdaddies
enough
for a feast
_______________hunt quail in season
____________________before the muzzle loader shoot

____IV._____In a month of Sundays

_______________30 country miles to the
_______________the horizon
Storm a’comin’
_______________and the sky opens up
_______________buckets of petrichor
____________________earth steaming

_____V._____Come Hell or high water

_______________the sun’s
_______________gonna
_______________rise
_______________Methodist women
gather in…….tornado shelters
_______________look down
_______________peel potatoes
_______________grate cheese
tell stories

____VI._____Red sky at morning

far from
any ocean
_______________bleeding Kansas
_______________wetlands near the Marais des Cygnes
_______________near Trading Post
the battle
_______________of Mine Creek and the Twin Trees
____________________in the free state
____________________of intelligent design

____VII._____Burning a hole in the daylight

a mirage
on a
highway
_______________a single lamp in Holcomb
_______________glows over a tractor
____________________the white porch the
______________________________windmill
_________________________the Clutter family ghosts

©2017 Anne Graue

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Anne Graue is the author of Fig Tree in Winter, available from Dancing Girl Press. Her poems have appeared in The Westchester Review, The Fem, Random Sample Review, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly, and The Plath Poetry Project. Additional poetry is forthcoming in Blood and Roses: An Anthology In Honor of Aphrodite. She has reviewed literary magazines and poetry chapbooks for New Pages. Her author website is at agraueag.wixsite.com/agraue.