Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review

Drought

J O A N M I T C H E L L Drought Season of the exoskeleton, spider days when the black widow flashes her hourglass. Land of red ant, black stink bug, rustle of lizard and snake, where the bark beetle carves intricate galleries into dying pines. Life dries from the outside in to tough root and armored stem. Buds parch before they can bloom. We, too, turn inward, slow as the day’s heat climbs. A snake coils at the spigot. Beyond, the earth chimes light, lacks past lives for lives to feed on. The wind wears trees to bone. Once I thought there were clouds, but it was fire lively across the valley. Still, the nights are owl-eyed and cool. Moths drum against the window. Last winter’s snow The 2000s ❚ 279 drifts green along the arroyo—rabbit brush and snakeweed, Apache plume and sage. There are thick-skinned gourds. And primrose, low to the ground, miraculous as manna. 280 ❚ The 2000s ...