Published online with Dewdrop, 2020
The waxy paper spouts of the sacred thorn-apples in the glen had fuzz-covered stalks the color of a frog’s underbelly without any thorns at all. There were no apples, either to better that foul-smelling bush that made no appearance in the tanglings of the vestibule garden of the lonely Saint Francis. At eleven, it seemed all Michigan green had lied to me in this bold-faced way- The black-eyed susans, ubiquitous squatters at the asphalt’s edge, were eye-less waifs of gold. Even the animals were fabulists. I learned this with my cask of skin sprawled face down on a turbid bed of stinking channel-waste staring at the sunfish.