arch

When will fear no longer linger between our bodies like a bass line humming some human rhythm, this piano whose strings would slit my throat into 230 slats of skin. Worry stretches tight over me like a membrane weather-resistant but not repellant. 

Mine

After the river rose, a kid ran screaming into town. Dead woman in a tree, strung up by stuff. A mile from the river, we saw the mangled body between the high oak branches, alive. 

on certainty

Leave her to die, moonshine slosh in the belly of the holler. Callused bare feet. Stained-cloth torsos, babydoll her daughter carried with painted swirls of hair on rubbery heads and loose eyelids that clicked shut.

The Vigil

Waller Creek

Perennial

The Collected Cathedrals of Mary Magdalene

The Man on the Moon

Emerging Voices selection by T Clutch Fleischmann

Shannon Ratliff

Books

Selected work