Your face is a bundle of sticks.
You offer me a bloodroot flower
wilting under an inappropriate sun.
You wear a worn wool apron
over a blouse of ratted linen.
Your kindling is cinched with burlap.
We’ll build a fire of your face
when the sun finally sets.
You’ve been hiding in the closet
of the abandoned K-Mart.
You’ve become a pastor to pigeons
nestled in trusses and rafters.
They coo to your sermons of
plentiful seed and a multiverse of millet.
I’ll be the minister’s wife.
I’ll make the casseroles
for all the pigeon funerals.
You are friends with an old possum
who lives behind the parking lot.
She is the priest of a brownfield,
holding services for mice, starlings and moles.
The two of you debate eschatology.
For possums the world is always ending.
For her it’s no big deal.
But this is your first time.
Tish Turl and Adam Turl, Born Again Labor Tract 39: Self-Portrait in the Closet of the Abandoned K-Mart - mixed-media collage and painting, digital prints, acrylic, stickers, wig hair, glitter, coffee, graphite, marker, cotton and ash on salvaged thrift-store "painting" (2025)
This poem originally appeared in Locust Review #13 (Winter 2025/2026)
Adam Turl is an artist and writer in southern Illinois, an editor at Locust Review, a member of the Locust Arts & Letters Collective. They work on an evolving art project and DIY community organizing space, the Born Again Labor Museum, with their partner, Tish Turl. They received an MFA from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art/Washington University in St. Louis. They also have a BFA in studip arts and PhD in media arts from Southern Illinois University. Adam has had solo exhibitions at the Brett Wesley Gallery and Cube Gallery in Las Vegas and Art Space 304 in
Carbondale, Illinois. In 2016 they received a fellowship and residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Adam published their first book in 2025 wwith Revol Press, Gothic Capitalism: Art Evicted from Heaven and Earth.