Back when my head like an egg in a nest was vowel-keen and dawdling, I shed my slick beautiful and put it in a basket and laid it barefaced at the river among the taxing rocks. My beautiful was all hush and glitter. It was too moist to grasp. My beautiful had no tongue with which to lick—no discernable wallowing gnaw. It was really a breed of destruction like a nick in a knife. It was a notch in the works or a wound like a bell in a fat iron mess. My beautiful was a drink too sopping to haul up and swig! Therefore with the trees watching and the beavers abiding I tossed my beautiful down at the waterway against the screwball rocks. Even then there was no hum. My beautiful was never ill-bred enough, no matter what you say. If you want my blue yes everlasting, try my she, instead. Try the why not of my low down, Sugar, my windswept and wrecked.
From Live from the Homesick Jamboree by Adrian Blevins. Copyright © 2010 by Adrian Blevins. Used by permission of Wesleyan University Press.