Pact
Jeremiah Prenn
I
I will not be at your funeral and you will not be at mine,
this is the pact we have made.
A house near Moorcroft, Wyoming is for me,
walk down the road to Eagle, Idaho and take a right,
it is not the same place,
this is a dream.
My desert home in a bowl of bare moguls,
scent of oil wafts far above in airlane sheets.
II
Sanct etched in marble of red frost,
smoked autumn,
blue cat.
Blue cat trots cute to her milk-bowl,
knowing the pavement-water,
the shelter near the airfield,
graphic pamphlets memos etc. can’t reach her.
III
A snag of metal is my home,
it heats up.
Flies and spiders,
and VHS tapes,
twenty years old.
Plastic baggie over condensed milk,
flies,
milk crust.
IV
The pact is written on something I lost.
Somewhere its name fumes a ledger,
crackling with sharp pops,
smoking the sky for char.
The name of the pact is lost,
but the obligation is not.
V
Wet autumn between dirty white theaters,
the marble blue shared,
I suppose,
with palm fronds somewhere,
with a grey miserable bank.
My home shrinks until it has its own piece.
Jeremiah Prenn lives in Boise, Idaho, and has been published in Wingless Dreamer, The Closed Eye Open, Cathexis Northwest Press, The Song Between Our Stars, and Sad Girls Club. His background in writing is simple: he’s been writing every single day for a long, long time. He’s interested in fiction and poetry that is precise and impactful.