The Meadow Annual Literary Arts Journal 2022

The Meadow 127 Grasshoppers Have Invaded Las Vegas and Experts Say It Could Last Jeff Whitney You want love to be like that: hungry, everywhere, wild air that makes the world big-small and bright, undots every question mark. I’ve tried to write this before. I called it Shame. Shame for running from my family into the dark. Shame for finding a family in that darkness. Shame for holding in this swarm of feeling. Shame to see it eat up the world. Its shadow like the dream that follows me to every dark: I fill the belly of a scarebird the exact shape of me, use hockey pucks for eyes, then hang myself in the garden where I watch something move through the grass that must be a rope dreaming of being a snake dreaming of dragons. It coils around me like rope, yes, it coils around me like that.

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