She doesn’t wish me dead
but she dreams me a clot,
a porcelain smear
chasing a current of almosts
on their trip downriver.
I’m not the mythic real boy,
the bookend son
in grass-stained denim,
baseball card
pinned in the spokes
of a turning wheel.
About the Author: Alicia Wright is a writer from Appalachia whose work appears or is forthcoming in Antiphony Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Does It Have Pockets, New Feathers Anthology, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and currently resides in West Virginia.
Image Credit: Chris Lanooy: Abstract-futurist Composition (1912) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
As It Ought To Be 