Aunt Em & Uncle Henry

Dorothy’s parents are no longer with us. The farm is well in its current state  
with walls of dust testing its sutures. Emily and Henry feed crullers to the hands  
and do what they can in their desperate times. They wonder what will make it  
as their neighbors have gone. I scoop a palm of dirt and the topsoil is barren.  
A fence surrounds the farm but there are no thieves to be seen, and the livestock  
has nowhere to go, no energy to try. The folks are crushed by the huge storm  
and they wonder if immaculate Dorothy won't make it. They watch her sleep,  
her body needing no food. There may be greener pastures in the world that follows.  
There may be luck in the blossoming darkness. There will be survival as the young  
woman dreams. If this were Oz it would all be the same. A nowhere no one remembers  
apart from leaving it. 

Horse of a Different Color

Wouldn’t it be the result of a rainbow? The sky saves 
what it wants to make wind. My mother saves her spot 
in the field. Nothing ever to be summed in a tale.  

At each of the corners it’s easy to rot. Pieces of wood 
ripe for flame. Crunched leaves to spoil the air.  

Car exhaust and carbon monoxide. Removal of each
of all the detectors. Death contained in every body. 
God’s progeny in human form.  

At the molecular level my skin is porous. None 
of the wishes ever in color. My precious riparian zone. 
Frogs flown in the day sky. Doors never locked.

BRETT SALSBURY

Brett Salsbury has had work most recently appear in deLuge, SUSAN, The Rockvale Review, Gasher, and Pretty Owl Poetry, with more work forthcoming from Two if By Sea. A graduate of the MFA program at UNLV, he has also served as a writer-in-residence at Sundress Academy for the Arts.