giving it up

posted May 1, 2012

i’d give up
the south for you
i’d give up
october cotton
creeks
smothered
by honeysuckle
in spring
fireflies
summer tornadoes
nights
spent in the storm
cellar curls
matted to a
sweat sheen neck
lulled to sleep
by thunder’s low
rockabye
rumble
yes
i would give up
dixie
loud lonesome
howl of coyotes
dumpster diving
possums
eyes afire
with some sweet
secret
somehow
on a city bound
train just us
and the gusty cold
you are
my sun my flaming
star
my south
my summer

Heather Foster lives on a farm in the Tennessee hills with her husband, kids, and Ozzy the heavy metal rooster. She’s an MFA candidate in poetry at Murray State University. Her poetry and fiction is featured or forthcoming in PANK, Monkeybicycle, Anderbo, Lumberyard, South Dakota Review, Moonshot Magazine, and Superstition Review, among others.