McKinley as a mountain bore
the softball bolus in his lung,
its tender fibers rooting along
lymph shafts to deposit itself
in black lodes. He had spent
everything running to Iowa
where the hospital strip-mines glowed
a radioactive affordability,
his instincts said this final prospect
would king or bust him:
this stage of his lonesomeness,
just like a mountain, and his
poverty, just like a mountain,
overwhelmed his hope of hitting
pay-dirt. As his soil eroded
before me, his grandeur
flitting to scree, It is what it is,
he repeated and repeated.
Jared Pearce wrote Down Their Spears (TMR, forthcoming) and The Annotated Murder of One (Aubade, 2018). His poems have recently been or will soon be shared in Aloe, Hip Pocket, and Lucky Jefferson. He lives and writes in Iowa, USA. For further information, see Jared’s website.
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