“At Large,” a poem by Brennan Bestwick

At Large

In the land of outlawed love,
you and I collect
police composite sketches
of one another.

We pull our mug shots
from the spine
of every telephone pole
in the city.

The local news airs video
of the two of us
necking in the museum,
Goya etchings

of demons over our shoulders.
We dissolve
into each other’s static before
the footage ends.

I throw the record player
we spent summers
falling asleep to through
the post office window,

tearing your picture
from the bulletin board.
I pound my chest at the camera
before running.

We meet in a junkyard,
feed the fire
with wanted posters,
throw bottles at stop signs

and watch them break
under the moon, our love
as loud as the helicopters
circling above us.

Brennan Bestwick is a reader and writer from the Flint Hills of Kansas. His poems have appeared in THRUSH, Winter Tangerine, Colorado Review, and others. He is the winner of a 2016 AWP Intro Journals Project Award. When he’s not writing, he’s drinking too much chamomile and eating banana peppers from the jar.

Image: my.meural.com

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