Breadcrumb #479
MEGHANN PLUNKETT
August in southern Illinois & we are drunk
on everything but worry. The tin boat we rented rocks
under our recreation. Plastic wine glasses & gasoline
from the engine casting a rainbow across the man-made
lake. Boredom or something more brought us here
to float on cotton candy inner tubes, a plastic unicorn
with a dumb cartoon eye toddles under my naked thighs,
flank up to the fleshy sun. Look at how we are not animals -
our teeth gnashing in fits of laughter,
my two hands crumbling a bag of potato chips.
What we have evolved to: our lips puckering
around a neon candy, our sunglasses skewing
the world darker. & these two rocky bluffs,
jutting out like an underbite, are a sharp surprise
in between parched farmland.
When we arrived, a small printed plaque told us
that the rocks were formed from glaciers.
Water dripping for billions of years
just to bounce our base music back to us.
Our small bluetooth speaker humming
atop nylon & fiberglass.
& the state paid for this sulphur-dry earth
to be dredged & filled with muddy water.
Shadows of fish here & there
dumped weekly by Park Rangers just so
twice-divorced fisherman can reel them in,
pretending a kind of wildness.
& the birds chirp so loudly
we think it is the ding ding
ding of our phones.
& they find us
large turkey vultures whooping
down from the cliffs,
& we are blissed, motionless, a beer bottle
tipping in a limp wrist– our text messages
whimpering out now & again
as these birds circles our plump bodies- waiting,
waiting. They think we are dead,
or that we may die very soon.