Pennies
That summer was a man
gathering fury like weather
was a sweaty ring
on the railing was a lake
green with runoff
was a nest of water
moccasins writhing
down a river was white
in the mouth
fat in the head was long
in the snout with heat-sensing
pits that summer
when we found blood
in the yard as if someone
dragged from the door
a mating ball of snakes
in the yucca a headless
hen strung up from the oak
behind your father’s house
where all that summer
we porch-sat and wished
on empties that glittered
the ditch across the street
as if they were pennies in a well.
Kate Gaskin's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Drunken Boat, Nashville Review, Guernica, Bellevue Literary Review, The Florida Review, and Whiskey Island among others. She is a recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in poetry to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the winner of The Pinch’s 2017 Literary Award in Poetry. She lives in Montgomery, Alabama.