Foreclosure Zone
Owls still inhabit the barn where dust motes
dance through stringy sunlight. Once a coal
and copper colored pony grazed in the field
that, come autumn, held a harvest of gunfire
and venison. Vines have twined across the roof,
covering a hammer’s labor. Snow has peeled
the camphor-colored paint. Weeds thread
the pea-gravel drive where a dimpled towhead
in a mad derby raced her brother to the back door,
eager to show off her art—a bracelet made of plastic
beads, thread and glue. Now the kitchen fills
with wax droppings and dead spider ash. One
green magnetic “B” lies on the floor, dropped
when they hauled out the frig. A hawk in cryptic
silence settles on the towering silo that leans empty.
—Melodie Barker, Flint, MI
Melodie Barker’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines like Yellow Medicine Review, Windmills, and Tales of the Unanticipated. She lives near Flint, Michigan. Annually, she takes her children on the Badger car ferry across the lake to Wisconsin so they can attend a science fiction convention in Madison.