Cornfield, a poem by Juliet Johnson

Wide
Rancid, awful
Wide
A little kid sits in the corner crying
His thumb big and purple from too much sucking
He’s sitting on vines covered with thick sticky
Green velcro
The birds pick at our hair, bleeding
There’s plenty of fresh corn
why are they eating us
The kid tries to climb
A stalk of corn so he can see better
I can see over the tops
It’s alright, I say
We’re in it.
The birds are singing a sweet song
Like earth, dead, hard and quiet
The kid crawls up inside me like a thousand ants
making their homes
The edge of the field is just over that hill
I lay out flat
Pulled out wide
I cover the whole cornfield
Pointy in every soft place
From the grass, he says
It looked easy

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