mark jackley

that year, i left my wife for someone who lived on a farm

An earthquake at the World Series --
that too had never happened.
Spiders webbed the front door
under a harvest moon,
cold-blooded as Stonewall Jackson
on Cedar Mountain beyond.
My dog loved to nose in
mole holes by the barn.
Years later, I bought my lover's tombstone.
Cancer, forty-one.
She looked just like her mother
who served time for murder.
Twice we broke her bed.
Cornstalks in October
were tawny and the darker
it got, the brighter they burned.