Millennia of Heck

Art by Lauren Farkas

All he has in this world:
Panhandle twang,
untuned Tallahassee

Salvation Army Fender
Stratocasters, hurricane

strays & wild chickens
for brains. Furious blazes
shock his palms holy-broken

—his feet remember
lightning turning dunes

into God’s blown glass.
In class, riptide-waisted
blondes misunderstood

his problematic
accent like a chalkboard

gibbering algebra—
his buckshot language follows
a blueprint of dead stars.

Bloodshot retina, dishwater
moptop, restless warbling

circling brick smokestacks—
he exists beneath traintracks
where Georgia azaleas boom

utopic in a hogweed haven.
Once, he was the ark’s dove

heckling every animal
with an olive branch
out both sides of his mouth.

Whatever they say
traces scars like gossip

behind his back.

Forrest Rapier is a recent MFA graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize and has appeared in Best New Poets, Texas Poetry Review, Verse Daily, barnstorm, The Greensboro Review, among others. He is currently a lecturer in the English Department at UNCG.