Andrew Koch is a recent graduate of the University of Tennessee where he earned his BA in Creative Writing. Koch's work has been published in literary magazines such as Mojo and you are here, and he has work forthcoming in Bluestem. Koch has visited all fifty states, but mostly hangs out in a holler in Knoxville, TN.---------
Escape from West Kentucky
I.
Snake Plissken was a child
who could interpret omens–
sacred sidewalk cracks
as sure as kill shots –
the morning he woke to a spider
spinning webs between his fingers
and the bed sheets –
these things meant home is
a metric unit
for measuring
spare tires, scratch-off tickets.
II.
His grandpa (the old firebag)
owned at least one peacock,
its majestic fan spread,
a hundred teardrop eyes that
shook like strips of newspaper
in January cold
when the bird tried to court
a broken screen door
that had laid against the barn wall
since Snake had been born.
He watched the bird dance,
off-step and thought of
an entire jar of fireflies
dying no matter how
much grass they’re given.
Plissken, he thought,
is the last Northern
name for miles.
III.
His teachers taught him
His teachers taught him
the best places to look
for the Ohio River Valley –
it is always a dish served
on a platter of Tennessee,
prepared by a chef with an Iowa face –
it is a delicacy for dignitaries,
with stomachs like cyclones
full of trailer parks.
IV.
His mother worked machines
at the muscle car plant,
and on days off school, Snake
watched bright metal members,
imagined the hidden parts
that cars might use to do it.
For half a year,
he ate apple-skins without checking
for stickers, his innards lined with barcodes,
waiting to see the side-effects
they might have on his thing.
He wished he loved boys and girls
as much as he loved smooth, factory metal
and running away from home –
going breakneck on his bike
at midnight, crashing,
swallowing mouthfuls of adrenaline.
He wasn’t hurt, but wore a patch
over one eye anyway.
Year of the White-tailed Deer
At the Valley Fair
a man called Bird Brain
shows off a handgun
that fires live sparrows
from its barrel.
Kids ask about the man's name.
He answers he once unloaded
eleven feathered rounds
into his head.
Everyone laughs.
On a carousel, cryptozoology
is not dead science.
Two unicorns skewered
with golden poles
share a kiss
as they spin.
Only children understand
the procreation
of imaginary animals.
A man
beneath a khaki curtain
speaks poems
in the argot
of fake archaeologists.
A plush case contains
a sequined set
of deer skulls
bolted to a single skeleton.
The khaki man claims
they have Cherokee names,
the spirits of the shoulder
of the road.
Family Land
Here
little girls have leash laws,
get haircuts constantly –
an endless cropping
of backyards,
photographs,
cakes.
The sun never goes down
but it gets dark often
when the batteries run out –
like the double A’s
for the blonde action doll,
all fingerprints and catchphrases.
Streetlights, like parable seeds
planted in shallow soil,
sag with their heavy,
metal bulbs.
It’s hard to tell
if they glow
or if it’s a trick
of the light,
like an apathetic galaxy
of glow-in-the-dark stars.
Everyone
walks around with their hands
in their pockets. Flocks
of tight shirts and running shorts,
I’ve caught them at night
in my headlights,
watering flower beds
after midnight, their eyes
like daffodils
the color of Camaros.
I think there’s an ice age
going on here.
No one can feel.
Even the clouds
are too big. They scrape
across the sky at night
so loudly I wake up
with blood in my ears.
This neighborhood is empty
on a Smithsonian scale,
a land of
ornamental
skeletons.
Houses rise like mammoths
through morning fog.