Space : a gold pan, sluicing itself.
Earth : blue streak, fossil of before + now + after, streaked blue.
Our birth : comet-crash.
The night : scarred with rain + lightning like a welding torch.
The town : Christian, conservative. More pumpkins than people.
Our mother : the most lovely thing !
Our father : absent.
Us : machine/man, water-tower-tall. Parts fair + impaired.
The man who finds us : open-mouthed.
Kieron Walquist is a queer autistic poet and hillbilly from Missouri. His work appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2022, Gulf Coast, IHLR, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Waxwing, and others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis, and is currently a 2022-2023 FAWC Fellow.