Cameron Morse
Dusty

      Pen, pail, scrap
            metal sparrows, mares
                  in the pasture, sunset sent

            messages, multivitamin
      beet pulp mix the family horse slurps,
sloshes,

      losing half of each bite
to the silt, isn't he
      good for nothing, the swayback, the gelding,
Dusty?

      Remember when I could take the morning's
            pills in a single gulp, when the lid still
closed? Sliding a bigger

                  pillbox off the prong at Walgreens,
            I applied for a job and waited for three weeks to hear

nothing, Dusty's eye
      bulging upon me. Perhaps he

            senses my sickness and knows to be wary
wary of what lies beyond the creek.

_ _

Cameron Morse taught and studied in China. Diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2014, he lives with his wife, Lili, in Blue Springs, Missouri. His poems have been or will be published in magazines, including New Letters, pamplemousse, Fourth & Sycamore and TYPO. His first collection, Fall Risk, is available from Glass Lyre Press.

>> Back to Issue 20, 2017