TPJunePoetry

Second Person

another voice pushes past the din and
into earshot, compels you to listen

it tugs at your earlobe
crackles in your auditory canal

worms its way down your eustachian tube
wraps around your throat

nudges you to respond
to sass and back-talk first, then consent

your voice gurgles in reply
first in its own timbre

blurring into vague echo
then melding into indistinguishable twoness

it slips into the open, audible and
adamantly your own and not your own

if you’re paying attention
you notice this

Fishing with Snakes

My bones register zero, too, in the presence of
a snake. For example, that black snake I startled
at Laurel Creek and it corkscrewed itself up to
three feet tall and hissed and I froze on the trail
until it unwound and withdrew, that copperhead
swimming down the center of the South Fork
and I lost the rainbow trout I had on the line and
drenched myself in the stream fleeing to the bank,
that harmless ring-neck sunning itself on a rock
along the Rose and I pulled a muscle leaping away
from it and limped all the way back to the car, or
the garter snake Billy Runyon brought to class one
day in the fourth grade and I fooled them all into
believing I wasn’t afraid when I dropped the snake
down the back of Ellen McElroy’s dress because
I wanted to touch her that much and it was the
only way I could think to do so at the time.

I live and work in the New River Valley near the Blue Ridge Mountains in southwestern
Virginia and teach American literature and creative writing at Radford University. I’m
the author of Escapee (America House, 2001), a collection of short fiction. My work has also been published or is forthcoming in various literary magazines, such as The Beloit Fiction Journal, Timber Creek Review, Literal Latté, The Georgetown Review, Acorn Whistle, The Edge City Review, Main Street Rag, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, One Trick Pony and Appalachian Heritage. My piece in Appalachian Heritage received the 2002 Denny C. Plattner/Appalachian Heritage Award for creative non-fiction. www.timpoland.com