Where they hung the jerk / That invented work
Read More
The Republic of Dreams
His work is better suited / for panic attacks / than anything smacking of pride.
Read More
Long Hours Away from Home
these parasitic hours sitting through the night
Read More
Free Black History
Free as black ants in a bladed line.
Read More
Invitation to Lubberland
‘Hot roasted pigs will meet ye,
Read More
The Red Temple
“Lay down your labors, good worker.
Put off your boots and gloves.
Enter, and be among your comrades whole.”
Abandoned Mining Town
I heard scurrilous things:
babies with two heads
locked in the attic,
Rail Against
exploit, object. St. Louis as beeswax, resin
Read More
Landlord Audacity
You, from inside your
publishing house of
unearned income,
A Farewell to Love Poems
Tenderness has no place here. / The long lineage / of gentle touch severed / by jagged images of the instant.
Read More
Behold No More the Chalked Calves of the Hunter
the whip crack from the snout of the gun / steel elephant blued / to a deep, desperate negative / stark against the snow
Read More
Wer Don't Need Much
as we wipe our tears on stone altars
Read More
Crown
beware how delicately you wear / this crown of oblivion.
Read More
I Wish I Was a Rich F*G
Working in that warehouse / Scanning Boxes by the rate / In Bezo’s dusty ass house. / I wish I was a rich f*g.
Read More
I Gather
it’s too quiet, / too dead, / too ripped apart by sirens, / too veiled by the rot of concrete
Read More
What if You Had Taken the Day Off?
What if you had taken a day off? / Read books in backyard jungles? / Enjoyed your coffee before it got cold?
Read More
Last Night on Earth
we’ve imagined more / than this last night on earth / bent over grinding machines
Read More
Abstract Art
you are the art / that hangs by strands
Read More
Bitter
you are the tree / that I nailed myself to
Read More
Withdrawal
withdrawal…
the worst is the parasitic organism
organism of the gut dying gunfire organism
the hallucinatory organism of railway seasons
hypnotic golden morality organism the kind
that justify them worthless carnival shootings
of jazz and tejano toned people; far away omitted poor;
momentary people...
a flu of noise bullets picking at the silence
death from spiral barrelled throats
weak cities black dimes accustomed to accumulated crisis
country horses force submission
fear not the gallery
be as empty as the dead exist
never count again years of defeat
gnaw the backstage rats grown fat with nervous words
seize the jealous ankles and mechanical muscles
of capital
the old god
the dead god
all that’s left is roses
This work originally appeared in the print edition of Locust Review #7.
Laura Fair Schulz, The Song of the Barren Tree (2021)
Subscribe to Locust Review for as little as $1 a month.
Submit work to Locust Review by e-mailing us at locust.review@gmail.com.