Nobody’s Dead
Rent from DeepDyve- Nobody’s Dead
Slade says he knows his redeemer lives.To redeem: meaning, to exchange. My body,promissory note. No thanks. My left handhas done work. My right, the nerves run neon-litinto my head. Slade doesn’t know his rightfrom wrong. Sometimes he looks like a pumpjack,every minute bowing to what is gone. Once, Icrossed over. Pulled to the roadside, got out.You’d think all that iron and oil would be noisome,and it is. Loud. I was sick. But I had to walkinto the field to know the machines surroundthis place like migrants, periphery blind and hard at it.I’m saying one time I got close. And I heard it.The tenor pitch, a tooth whistle, out from the fault,coming through it all. [End Page 40]
Rebecca Gayle Howell is the poetry editor at Oxford American magazine and the author of Render/An Apocalypse. Among her awards are two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center and a Pushcart Prize. Currently, she is writing a purgatory set in West Texas.
