Trail
- Trail
Trail
June 18, 2013
Me thinks you are a low-glycemic sweet, what I love—
a mix, sweet & salty. When I met you, my life leant out from its clif into a new
not ordinary a wholesome helping. Certainly, youhave your organic traits
but so too you do contain tracesof dairy and peanuts. We have both
said allergen statements we did not mean, forsworn that our love was too engineered, too saturated …
Yet, we stayed, dedicated to the people, our bodies, and the planet too …Such sugars cocoa butter vanillaO my chocolateMy almondMy coconutWherever you are, come here. Get some. [End Page 160]
Trail
Father’s Day, 2013
Dear Dad,
It was a day dedicated to whenever and whereveryou are. A day dedicated to the energy of bodies whenever and whereverwe are, because I am me because of whenever and whereveryou have been, which is to say, I did not call. I could addI hope you understand, whenever and whereveryou are, “The Meadows,”—where whenever and whereveris presently—but I know you are way past mixing things up,the wholesome ordinary no longer the whenever and whereverbut rather some trail off a clif off the planet to no particular whenever and wherever …This is what happens to people, folks, whenever and whereverwe are, time combines with energy ready to go whenever and whereveryou are not, which is to say, I know whenever and whereveryou are, you did not understand, whenever and whereverwhatever you were thinking. How could you? [End Page 161]
Trail
June 21, 2013
Summer camp is where I drop my daughter off whenever and wherever I can.Summer camp is no fun, is not nice, is contains everyone-kills-insects, contains nuts.Summer camp contains.Summer camp is the little cabin at summer camp, which will digest you slowly like a giant snake.Summer camp is unnatural, is genetically engineered, could cause cancer.Summer camp is dedicated to making a mountain out of a nice morning.Summer camp is a trail that leads children up the mountain and off a clif.Summer camp is not for the planet.Summer camp is not your ordinary horror, is worse than all the Fortune 500 companies combined.Summer camp is the source of everything that is the opposite of goodness, including cholesterol.Summer camp is a world without gum or the sea or any of the ingredients for a wholesome life.Summer camp is helping no one, folks, summer camp is dedicated to turning whenever and wherever you are unsweetened.Summer camp is to chocolate as M–F 8–5 is to delicious.Yet, summer camp is so sweet and you are diabetic, it is high glycemic— you slip into a coma …Yes, summer camp is so sweet …Summer camp is where I pick her up, where she is a sunflower, where summer camp is the sun. [End Page 162]
Trail
August 18, 2013
Checking for tumor markers is sweet& salty, a trail mixed so there’s this trail …dedicated to getting out there, itis not your ordinary secret;is it distributed like a cometby fire tail? Trail by fire? She’s on trail …Checking for tumor markers is sweet& salty, a trail mixed … So there’s this trail … [End Page 163]
Heidi Lynn Staples is the author of four volumes, including Noise Event (Ahsahta, 2013). Her debut collection, Guess Can Gallop, won the New Issues Poetry Prize, and her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, McSweeney’s Sestinas, and Ploughshares. She is assistant professor of English at Piedmont College in Athens, Georgia.
These poems, from a manuscript titled The Arrangements, are autobiographical pieces written using word banks collected from the trash that migrates through the author’s office.
