Poetry: Brain Beatty
Coyote Coyote
—for Tony Fitzpatrick
That forest that goes
unseen for its own trees
is full of mirrors, too:
obscure, obscene
American mirrors baring
our teeth.
We like whatever we notice once
we dare to re-open
our eyes.
But those dark unknowns we still fear
run wild through
our veins.
And in the proud American way
bullets whiz by
our heads.
We just stand here staring.
Frozen. Limbs stuffed.
Black Eyes Everywhere
The neighborhood crows know
something they’re not telling us
and they won’t shut up about it.
I was that way
those two years I lived in Ohio—
polluting the air
with talk it would’ve been
impossible for anybody to walk.
The young and dumb do that.
Not just birds.
Not just terrified Midwesterners.
Idiots everywhere have
trouble keeping their own secrets.
They can’t wait to escape, to explode
from bare limbs
into a black cloud.
Brian Beatty’s jokes, poems and stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Conduit, elimae, The Evergereen Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Quarterly, and Seventeen. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Photo credit: shannontanski, morguefile.com
Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
Heavy Feather Review 