Skyler Osborne
TEN ACRE SONG
From this distance, I won’t know you.
I don’t care about the names of the trees
swaying. That branch fell like a calling.
Kill the insects. Kill the birds.
Hit the sunlight; fuck the world.
The sadness is in my hair,
my teeth—my meaninglessness
in my wooden chair. In October,
I will change.
I will put the words down.
Sinkholes, dreamwars,
deer scatter infinitely.
A moth folds herself into the mulch.
Carry me from comfort to comfort.
The neighbor kid laughs toward us
with a hatchet.
SKYLER OSBORNE is the author of Rejoicer (Driftwood Press, 2023). He received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas.
ISSUE FIFTEEN features poetry by Samuel Amadon, Malachi Black, Thea Brown, Michael Chang, Adam Clay, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Brandon Downing, Kami Enzie, Angie Estes, John Gallaher, Rachel Galvin, Matthew Gellman, Bob Hicok, Domenica Martinello, Julia Anna Morrison, Mark Nowak, Allan Peterson, Elizabeth Robinson, David Roderick, Mary Jo Salter, Rob Schlegel, Will Schutt, Donna Stonecipher, Rodrigo Toscano, Noah Warren, Phillip B. Williams, and Stella Wong; fiction by Aimee Bender, Amelia Gray, and Keith Lesmeister; creative nonfiction by Su-Yee Lin, Philip Metres, and Kim Gek Lin Short; and Donna Stonecipher in conversation with Camille Guthrie.