Big Thicket

Conny's Promenade by Nuala McEvoy

Here I drive nowhere again, stunned.
A speckled roadrunner hops right over
to the edge of the faded asphalt where
it shoots directly beneath my wheels.
Why am I always surprised by this?
The mockingbird, at this point, shouts
mockingbird Cowabunga then dives
from inside a 100-year-old live oak
on Spur 485 every time a car drives
across its one lane bridge. Don’t die
before you’re dead says cemetery road.
So, we yell, we cry, we fly, we roll
our eyes at late roller skate romances
& calmly tell heaven to go to hell. Well.
See the roadrunner landing beneath
the blackberry tangle on the other side,
wings outstretched in an airport hug?
All I want to do is meet you there.
Your bright berry eyes aglare at me
to eat them. Your deer colored deer
safe inside my thicket of wild trees
looking more unkempt than shady.

About the author

Eric Roy is the author of a chapbook All Small Planes (Lily Poetry Review Press 2021) which received Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominations for its hybrid writing. His recent work can be found or is forthcoming at Apple Valley Review, Bennington Review, Fence, Harpur Palate, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.

about the artist

Nuala McEvoy is of English/Irish origin but has lived abroad for many years. She started writing and taught herself to paint approximately five years ago, at the age of around fifty. Her writing has since been published in several literary magazines and she has read her poems on podcasts. She started submitting her artwork this year, and her paintings have been accepted for publication in Red Ogre Review, Acropolis Journal Quibble Lit, Heimat Review, Londemere Lit, Suburban Witchcraft, Underbelly Press, Ink in Thirds, Through Lines and Free Flash Fiction, The Chestnut Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, Radar Poetry, Remington Review, Peatsmoke Journal, Drawn to the Light Press, Pithead Chapel, The Engine Idling, Door is a Jar and Plum Club Literary Journal, Underscore Magazine, and others. She was recently interviewed by The Madrid Review and was the featured artist in Does it Have Pockets. She has two exhibitions in Münster, Germany and is currently preparing an exhibition in London. X @mcevoy_nuala