they don’t even hide anymore,
the snakes in the ferns, draping slack & slick
& blue-black across giant fingered fronds.
lizards skitter away but come right back
to catch dinner. quick dart toward
ants hauling a husk of grasshopper,
theft of a feast. even the big owls
don’t seem to mind you passing
where they perch on fence posts,
black eyes iron pot lids covering
silent windless voids, flat faces satellites
swiveling. they don’t so much as
blink when you stop & stare. they just lift
those lids & beckon you to slip quick
into frigid dizzying dark.
ANNIE FRAZIER grew up in North Carolina, lives in Florida, and earned her MFA from Spalding University. Her poetry has appeared in North Carolina Literary Review and NCLR Online. Her fiction is in CHEAP POP, Still: The Journal, Crack the Spine, apt magazine, and NCLR. She’s @anniefrazzr on Twitter.
Image: alexis parra via pixabay
The Cabinet of Heed 