[My ancestors are empty words]
no pencil
on gelatine paper
no intricate live edge
of the Missouri
no breaking sod
to mine it for wheat
no magnate's gold to
drive our bodies into the fields
no wheat sliding east down
easements that pierce the treaty lands
no ghost of Dorothy
sits up in my body
no craft cocktail:
John Brown's Dugout 14 bucks
no wet grass curls
above and beneath us
no tractorsfulls of
whiskey empties
no empty words
silting our throats up
no empty bowl
of cut-up peaches
no wombs lit
up with atrazine
no place but
that's just hearsay
Copyright © 2020 by Kerry Carnahan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 18, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.