is a tight little island, a prairie zephyr, a hoax, an average western type, is a pile of rope, pig-iron, coke, softwood, hardwood, bran & jam-stained fingers right in the time-spot, ticks in the fur. is apple peel auguries, weevils in flour. twenty-four prunes with senna leaves, one pint of boiling water, a plug of wood covered in flannel & double-fleshed by corrosion. is in mourning black & gingham, buckwheat, greengage, mackerel in kits & layers of raisins. is drums of figs instead of hard, ungainly knobs. does not project too far beyond the general outline, affords a concealed recess for the fingers : the latter greater than it appears, & still more so in nebraska
is a hook, a hood, a helpmeet, a platform, a seeder, an arrow through topsoil saying come : is flax into bales, into rope, into twine, sacks, paper from straw, glass, starch, starch from maize, wheat, &c., canned fruits, potted meats, vegetables, blankets, woolens, carpets (cheap carpets), leathers & skins. how so many flourish in a place so young is quite a mystery to me : a can of lye dissolved in a gallon of rainwater, ten cents’ worth of salts & all scraps dried, all scraps rolled up fine & streaked : a cupful of spirits to each pail, each revenant caravan : a cloud of smoke that somehow brays : braided hair in a frame, seeds for the eyes : a single continuous effort : is white squares tatted, mended, starched : quarry for swimming, colony of two : from sod to hardwood, if you’re lucky : salamander bricks in a stack by the tractors. vision is white lines that come from the eyes themselves : projections across the plain :
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Sarah Heady is a poet and essayist interested in place, history, and the built environment. She is the author of Comfort (Spuyten Duyvil, forthcoming 2022), Corduroy Road (dancing girl, 2021), and Niagara Transnational (Fourteen Hills, 2013). She is also the librettist of Halcyon, a new opera about the death and life of a women’s college. Sarah is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, In Cahoots, Asylum Arts, the Home School, Art Farm, and Summer Literary Seminars. Raised in New York’s Hudson Valley, she now lives in San Francisco where she co-edits Drop Leaf Press, a small women-run poetry collective. More at sarahheady.com.