Old friend,
stuck in that small town,
we tried every way we could
to kill ourselves. 
 
That night down on the river,
that night I lost you?
 
That was a stupid night.
 
I think about it all the time.
 
We’d already sunk the front wheels
of your three-on-the-tree Impala
in the cow shit & mud.
 
Around the fire
I didn’t know half the faces.
 
You gnashed a palmful of pills.
You took off your shirt.
 
I didn’t want to ride with just anybody.
 
Old friend,
where did you go? I circled the flames,
banged on every back window.
 
Later, swaying at the water’s edge,
I started tossing rocks,
winging them hard.
 
I was hoping in the dark
I’d hit you.

Copyright © 2018 Joe Wilkins. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review, Summer 2018.

In the blue dark I followed the ridge
toward the pines.

In a bowl of sage and dry grass
soft as the throat-hairs

of something small,
I lay down.

The sun was a long time coming,
the earth bloodless at my belly.

I waited and watched the river.
I was very still. You know how it is—

the stars closing their bright mouths,
the dew a gift on your lips.    

You did not see me,
or my rifle,

blue as the dark. I saw you
step from the willows,

give your nose to the black water.
And you were beautiful. There is so much

blood in a thing—
yours welled up from the clean hole

I made in your heart and steamed
on the river stones,

and some washed down into the river,
where it swirled a moment,

and became the breath of fish.

Copyright © 2012 Joe Wilkins. “Then I Packed You Up the Ridge Like a Brother on My Back” was published in Notes from the Journey Westward (White Pine Press, 2012). Used with permission of the author.