Raspberries lose their gumption in late July.
They placate themselves, accept
becoming bird feed to disperse

among conifers, to flow wordlessly
into the quagmire and wait for the snout
of next year. Their branches are like mercury

in a newborn’s fever, their leaves
like a spirometer testing an old woman’s
lungs, their roots—a lance through an abscess.  

Terry Belew lives in rural Missouri and is an Instructor at State Technical College of Missouri. A student in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and a poetry editor at The Good Life Review, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Storm Cellar, The American Journal of Poetry, Split Rock Review, The Fourth River, Tar River Poetry, and West Trade review, among others.