Robyn Schelenz 
​

Red State

In this sea of barns,
the sun is a tractor.

The clouds are dirty
and cleaning themselves against the earth.
Rain helps.
Haven’t we all felt
our little heads get tricked?
Rain or ray?
​
Don’t you know
every sneeze has its origins
94 million miles away
in a tornado of chaff and wheat

Sent down to us in little pigeon envelopes
that you have the audacity not to believe?

---

Seventeen

Summer struck the road like a match
and lit its lamp.
No longer allowed to sleep
through progression of color
I park my car with its white paint
in the belly of a cicada.
​
Names dangle above me
in the skies,
All the flying animals
waiting like soldiers.

The swingset, the locomotive
the back 9 the sprung trap
the way a gold field hurts
how wheat wants you to be threshed with it

If people sing, I will sing.
If people praise, I will praise.

But I drove to a world
where nobody understands my language.

---

--
Robyn Schelenz is from Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Her work can be found at Gone Lawn, Maudlin House, Permafrost and Relegation Books' journal R&R, among other places. Her chapbook "Natural Healing," a collection of fables about our (un)natural attempts to heal the (un)natural world, is out from Bottlecap Press.