MAGGIE QUEENEY
Homestead
We settled where stranded:
the hollow
where the horse fell leg by leg
as if descending a staircase, snake-bit
and frothing; the purse puckered,
stomach vacant; child burnt bright
as a banked fire.
Now what holds us
is the sweet water-swelled well;
back taxes and small bills owed; hatchet-
bites linking trunks into walls; crosses
like stitches darkening the far field
and the bones we know glow
milk-white even under a hide
of dirt;
the shape made of two bodies—one arm
coiled round the other held down.
Maggie Queeney reads and writes in Chicago. Her recent work has appeared in Copper Nickel, TYPO, Southern Poetry Review, and The Southeast Review, among others.