Kerry James Evans

there is a song
and in it my boyhood self

walks home apples
ripening in brown sacks

two cans of knockoff
butterbeans a runny

nose and a shoe
in need of mending

     *

there is a song
no guitar can play

and it sounds like flour
sifted over a pan like lightning

never leaving a cloud
a lover who never speaks

too loud it hums like lips
on the skin of a drum