in the South, a body might do that, or
it makes a body feel some type of way.
Here rounding at the knees to support

the body as it carries my keepings
up the hill; wrists in coats as a body
walks around the city; picked a hair

from my shoulder, but it wasn’t my hair.
A body can confide. Fortune carries
sometimes in the body like a coin kept

in the stomach: when you pull a tooth
from a body, drive it in an apple tree
for good luck. It is bad luck for a body

to find an open safety pin; good
to find a button—if
a body keeps it. Don’t mend

a garment while it’s worn. A body
looms like a tree dressed in winter
kudzu: stems ashbrown bodies

as the leaves die back in the cold,
stems trailing where in summer
they’d grown as much as a foot in a day:

stems like hair from a ghost body.
Kudzu can grow on a body.
When the rain is far off

over them, the jagged Cascades
round like the backs
of bodies in prayer. It’s bad luck

to watch a body out of sight.


See more poems from Issue 17.2 by purchasing a copy in our online store. Digital copies only $5.

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