Brian Beatty
Lorine Niedecker
I once roused a wild
turkey out of the woods
behind that Burger King
on the edge of town.
Time stopped as we faced off
in the drive-thru lane, both convinced
the right of way belonged to us.
I’m plenty aware how ridiculous
this must sound.
But I was hungry.
Frank Stanford
The crook of the moon
silhouettes the owl
in the tree though not
the snake curled below.
The lukewarm tea
he sips at the barn door
tastes mysteriously
like homemade whiskey.
He chokes down the night
then coughs up God.
About Brian Beatty
Brian Beatty is the author of the poetry collections Borrowed Trouble (Cholla Needles Press, 2019), Dust and Stars: Miniatures (Cholla Needles Press, 2018), Brazil, Indiana (Kelsay Books/Aldrich Press, 2017) and Coyotes I Couldn’t See (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Beatty’s poems and stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The American Journal of Poetry, The Bark, Cholla Needles, Conduit, Dark Mountain (England), 8 Poems, The Evergreen Review, Forklift Ohio, Gigantic, The Glasgow Review of Books (Scotland), Gulf Coast, Hobart, McSweeney’s, Midwestern Gothic, The Moth (Ireland), The Museum of Americana, Nice Cage, Noon, Paper Darts, Phoebe, Poetry City USA, The Quarterly, RHINO, Seventeen, Southern Poetry Review, Switchblade, Sycamore Review and Two Hawks Quarterly.