Postcard from Texas
︎︎︎︎︎ Pat Dunham
︎Nov 5, 2023
Dear Christian,
I’m writing you a postcard with nowhere to send it. Not sure how to reach you these days but I’m back in the Hill Country for my mom’s wedding. It’s the Fourth and I’m sprawled out on the grass, my little cousins’ ankles all already peppered with ant bites. Fragments of the parade are curling around me like smoke: the horses under a fortress of clouds thicker than a million milkshakes, proud fossils on ruby red tractors, 2,000 neon tubes of frozen fructose, bull riding in the town square, American stupor haloed with stars, cicada trills stretching to a pure drone that could go on forever.
I’m writing you a postcard with nowhere to send it. Not sure how to reach you these days but I’m back in the Hill Country for my mom’s wedding. It’s the Fourth and I’m sprawled out on the grass, my little cousins’ ankles all already peppered with ant bites. Fragments of the parade are curling around me like smoke: the horses under a fortress of clouds thicker than a million milkshakes, proud fossils on ruby red tractors, 2,000 neon tubes of frozen fructose, bull riding in the town square, American stupor haloed with stars, cicada trills stretching to a pure drone that could go on forever.
Pat Dunham writes poems and makes collages in Brooklyn. He’s got a poem forthcoming from @warmmilkpublishing ~ others have appeared in Prelude, petrichor, Salt Hill Journal, and Splitting the Real, a chapbook published by Ugly Duckling Presse.