piedmont station delaplane, virginia

by Audrey Walls

here the hickory trees
hang dead in dry silence
like stiff brown bones.

if you dropped a lit match
you would burn the land
the barns, the farms, the homes.

leaving a trail of char
through the yellowing grass,
blackening every blank stone.

you would rewrite the story
with your tinderbox fingers
of how you were left here alone.


Audrey is a third-year MFA student in creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University and poetry editor of the online literary journal failbetter. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Booth, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, Handsome, The Pinch, storySouth, Superstition Review, Unsplendid and elsewhere.

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