Carrie Etter

 

McLean County Highway 39

tar shrugs goes to dirt
gravel's slow crunch over
winter with no hill for
frost to the horizon

*

green hectares rising into our
Illinois' no blond endeavour
but for the tassels dangling
covert threads of silk

*

cycle up dirt-dust's brown haze
flattening thought a prairie
the only height for miles
a grove its doe

*

sweat and cornstalks taller than
pushed through the close
click into speed sticking hairs
peel the nape free

*

all exhale the green expanse
cicadas' two notes sunset
the red eye pink strata
push an unwavering line

*

without thought three miles out
an idle porch swing
shrug or flattening not silence
but nothing heard in

*

soybeans crouch along even as
horizon at my back
cools toward streetlamps and cement
glide in the last

 

 

Copyright © 2008, Carrie Etter.

Carrie Etter teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University. Her first collection, The Tethers, was published by Seren in June 2009, and a second, Divining for Starters, will be published by Shearsman Books in 2010 or 2011. A chapbook, Yet, was published by Leafe Press in 2008, and another, The Son, is due from Oystercatcher Press. She is also editing an anthology of experimental writing by British women poets for Shearsman, Infinite Difference, which is due for publication in March 2010.