Aberdeen, Washington
by Sam Friedman

    Evergreens herringbone misty hillsides
    where they await shark-toothed saws,
    then are stricken, stripped, trucked, and dumped
    beneath chimneys pumping ashes,
    where the trees-- oozing stumps await their selection
    to be lumber for sprouting prisons
    or paper for poets' pens.

    Some lie in triangles of parallel wooden rods,
    trim like the tomb-stones of Arlington;
    others helter-skelter like bodies in Bergen-Belsen
    awaiting the harvesters
    of their golden teeth.






Copyright © 2024 by Red River Review. First Rights Reserved. All other rights revert to the authors.
No work may be reproduced or republished without the express written consent of the author.