The cows got out again, so Dad drives his rusted bronco through the neighbor’s orange groves.
Headlights catch a spotted haunch of meat; his revolver squeezes juice from unripe, yellow flesh.
I lock the old shed we never use. In daytime, sunlight cuts through and offers the cross sections
of a defunct sprinkler pump, a broken shovel, a crumpled snake’s skin deflating without its flesh.
She sits on my lap and chugs wine. You look high. Do you want to dance? I used to be addicted
to cocaine. In her locked dorm room, a desk lamp replaces our pink skin with moon-flesh.
I sneak into an unfinished high-rise, mildew and drywall covering my hands like the flesh
of jasmine vines. A sudden timbre of footsteps—squatters maybe, ghosts maybe, inked flesh or no flesh.
Jerrod Schwarz is an MFA student at the University of Tampa and is also the managing poetry editor for Driftwood Press. He has been published in Dirty Chai, Scapegoat, Four Ties Literary Review, and others. The above things are a little mundane. In his day to day life, Jerrod does whatever he can to escape the heat of his Floridian climate, and has been known to take part in staring contests with alligators who would challenge an otherwise refreshing swim.
