Breadcrumb #460

SHANNON STOLZ

Field of corn, maize of concrete bars that stand tall and gleaming;
There’s a nightlight in the sky that casts down its radiating false fuckery,
And bids its brighter brother to do the same. Four voices blow from every direction,
Whispering unheard words; they blow into ears that can’t listen.

I remember the color of air before the dirt sucked me ankle-deep under the stalks,
Back when I saw more than giant tractor monsters teetering on steep green oases
Who threatened to fall a thousand times over and pull me with along with them.
But those monsters don’t fall; they just let husky string suffocate oilblood fingers.

The prisoners to my right are stuffed with straw, the same straw as those to my left,
And that goddamn nightlight drops to them a transparent rope, and they all touch,
They all touch, but scared of ropeburn they never grasp. “Tomorrow,” they say.
Tomorrow it is, yesterday it was, and the day before feels so long ago.

It reeks of cow ass and healthy corn, not corn for people but the corn for cattle
That feeds the hordes of wandering livestock, prepped for prepping, prepped for
Endless days stuck in the same soil and wheat-woven bonds. One cow looks at me,
Smelling of thick shit air, and asks, “Who’s really at the bottom of the food chain?”

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