What Barren Means
Robyn Anspach
The way fields look when we walk past them,
dried tangles of hair. We leave our heads
bare and wind comes in like breath
off the desiccated fields. The husks
of cornstalks grasp pointlessly at sky.
We do not stop to touch them. We are going
somewhere, which is to say elsewhere,
because we are just walking the way
we do when the gray sets in, walking
down any of the roads that lead from town
to empty fields, with heads bare and heat
twining like cigarette smoke around us. Another
neighbor is pregnant. We saw her laying her right
hand on her belly the way pregnant women do.
Outside cornstalks bob their heads like bodies
propped up on stakes. Another harvest is over.
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dried tangles of hair. We leave our heads
bare and wind comes in like breath
off the desiccated fields. The husks
of cornstalks grasp pointlessly at sky.
We do not stop to touch them. We are going
somewhere, which is to say elsewhere,
because we are just walking the way
we do when the gray sets in, walking
down any of the roads that lead from town
to empty fields, with heads bare and heat
twining like cigarette smoke around us. Another
neighbor is pregnant. We saw her laying her right
hand on her belly the way pregnant women do.
Outside cornstalks bob their heads like bodies
propped up on stakes. Another harvest is over.