It almost snowed. So close to winter, my feet
perpetually cold. My daughter screamed awake
with a spider crawling down the wall above her bed,
she’d just gotten to sleep in spite of a nasty cough.
There’s so much to do before spring. I have to find
love. I have to clean the bathroom. The kitchen. My soul.
I can sell books to pay someone. Does that make me
a class traitor or just tired? But I’m grateful
for the books, grateful for the updates on my father,
dying. Coming home to someone else’s noise.
We used to roll down the ridge, trying to flush
snakes. One of them chased me up a fence one
time. My sister swears she remembers carrying
me through the snow after a seizure, but I didn’t have
those until my preteens. Once, my sister called
to ask if the lake was frozen. I ran to the barbed wire
fence in my underwear and climbed up to look,
but got caught in the barbs and called to mom
to help, afraid the neighbours would hear down the hill
and look up to catch me, so I climbed out of them,
left them on the fence, and ran back to the TV.
Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than thirty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, The Bottle Episode, and his newest, Having a Baby to Save a Marriage, as well as his latest novels If You Love Me, You’ll Kill Eric Pelkey and The Devil and Ricky Dan. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.