by Tresha Faye Haefner
We worship it as we make our own God
from out the ground. Glitter floats in the impossible.
And I grew up obscure, as any calf
-skin wallet, a grain of dirt caught in the pan.
The step-child to starlight, constellation of ax.
Man hunched in a river sorting through
his sweaty ideas. Like all true Americas I want
to be somewhere else. Coin. Country. Lullaby.
Look. Cows come back from the black branches.
Let us crown ourselves
with mud. We of the stinking mines (mine. My own.)
We of the town of mines. The town of little gold
mushrooms growing out of wet ash
to fill our winter bowls
with cold.
Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, Blue Mesa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Five South, Hunger Mountain, Mid-America Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle, TinderBox and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012, 2020, and 2021 nomination for a Pushcart. Her first manuscript, “Pleasures of the Bear” was a finalist for prizes from both Moon City Press and Glass Lyre Press. It was published by Pine Row Press under the title When the Moon Had Antlers in 2023. Find her at www.thepoetrysalon.com, and on Substack.
Emerge Literary Journal 