“Prairie”

“Prairie” by Ryan Clark begins:

Here are pasture gates and telephone poles, brush trees mesquite
clawing at clouds but so short they can only ever grab at the tops

of prairie grasses, and if they are green they are lucky, though the green
of the highway sign shouting East Highway 62 will always be brighter.

And abandoned houses fall with cratered roofs like words fallen dead
just finger bones praying outward through the walls and into the clay….

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