Poetry

Kerry James Evans was born in Alabama and is a recipi­ent of the Academy of American Poets Prize. He served six years in the Army National Guard as a combat engineer and attends the doctor­ate program in creative writing at Florida State University. Evans’s debut collection is entitled Bangalore (Copper Canyon Press, 2013). He lives in Tallahassee.

Five Poems

by Kerry James Evans

Barred

            Gary, Indiana

I belly-crawled through rubble
and ash. Sidewalks
shattered against the curb,
and the asphalt
wintered itself like madness
leaving a wolf after the kill,
after the throat bleeds
out onto the ground.

I licked bullets from brick walls,
abandoned the car
at a steel mill. I dropped
from the sky like mortar fire,
like the youth
of this town—sponged
from a five-gallon bucket
and the liquor stores still open.
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