I’d like to tell you a story in which
I push for the death penalty,
suit you up with a jury
and lay your crime before the court
in a manner I learned from Ms. Eliza:
Three mice rode a gray elephant!;
the first sentence I read aloud in Kindergarten,
but this story isn’t an achievement,
though it is nearly as absurd: your friends are dead, calling from land lines,
authorities have their location pinned
to within inches of depth;
evidence will be exhumed as lines unfold from
a wet paper swan.
Travis Blankenship’s poetry appears or is forthcoming from A cappella Zoo, Artifice, and Smash Cake magazines among others. He has been the recipient of a Tin House Writer’s Workshop scholarship, the Jim Wayne Miller Poetry Prize, a Geoffrey McClevly Memorial Award, and a Bondurant Prize in poetry. He founded the Goldenrod Poetry Festival now in its 6th year at Western Kentucky University. Currently, he is senior editor of the Yalobusha Review and lives in Mississippi.