I went to inspect Iowa
and uncover her consolation.
I found her gold
fields cut and stumbled
in her stubble, her dark furrows

dragged to the sun, her
fallow mud and deserted lane
lined with unnamable corpses,
the ponds in her pocks
like sheets of steel.

There was no escape
from solitude, no fowl,
fur, leaf. The tufts of trees
were so many dried veins.

____
Jared Pearce’s collection, The Annotated Murder of One, was released by Aubade last year (www.aubadepublishing.com/annotated-murder-of-one.) His poems have recently been, or will soon be shared in Aji, Adelaide, The Aurorean, Xavier Review, and Armarolla. For samples and current doings, you’re invited to https://jaredpearcepoetry.weebly.com.

Photography by William Crawford.