One August morning,
I carried the bowl of grain
out, lifted the lid, &
a plume of flies twisted into the air.
Heaped in the corner
was a bird, black and fat,
with its belly turned up and tunneled open.
I dropped the lid,
retrieved The Gloves,
gripped her leg,
pulled the body
from the sticky puddle of blood.
The maggots tumbled and
spread from the corner
to rotted gaps in the wood.
As I lifted her into the bag,
clumps of oily feathers quietly
fell to the grass.
Savannah Jackson is a 17 year old senior who has lived in more small Iowa towns than she can count. Two years ago she moved to the real middle of nowhere where she currently lives in a house surrounded by miles of corn. She's learned about life out there and how different rural people are from townies and people in the city. She was nominated as an honorable mention in the Nancy Thorp poetry contest out of Hollins University this year.