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.