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  • Little Elegies
  • Justin Carter (bio)

Like the nights you stopped offat the bar & didn’t make it home,slept on your brother’s lawnor your cousin’s lawn or in a ditchbecause no one would let yousleep on their lawn, missedyour day shift at the milk plant& ended up bartendingfor free beers. Blame: you blamedeverything on that time whenyou were fourteen & went withyour father to help him cookvats of chili for the volunteerfire department, snuck outwith Ralph, dumped two Coronasinto the grass, then filledthe bottles with rocks. He put themin the street & you hid in the bedof your dad’s F-150 untila car zoomed through, the rocksflying up, cracking holes inits windshield. Everything tracedto small moments, these little elegiesfor what you’ve become—whenyou jumped from that river bridge,did you know that of the fourwho went, only three of you [End Page 81] would swim back? & in the dark,you’d have to call a name loud enoughthat he might hear it, but quietenough that the cops couldn’t. [End Page 82]

Justin Carter

Justin Carter is a PhD student at UNT. His poems & fictions can be found in The Collagist, The Journal, NANO Fiction, Ninth Letter, Passages North, & Sonora Review, where he won the 2014 Sonora Review Poetry Prize.

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