Day 22, Poet 22: Jon Pineda

Photo by Emma Pineda

Predators in an Abandoned Drive-In
 
fig crinkle flickering/ culled oil celluloid/ rain hit bone
hibernation no/ anemic cinema/ iceman on air ripe prairie
 
throttled open snow/ northern spotted owl/ nettled photos worn
netted protons howl/ air thin bone no/ on law born/ brawl on
 
barn owl—predators? teardrops/ Dear ports/ (Auden’s chance
edit)/ a hectic den/ a seined dune catch/ a catch died unseen
 
sea slew/ seal sew/ aweless weasels/ shawl we tow
dead elk wraith/ saw-whet owl/ death like draw
 
(radiated whelk) red-tailed hawk


Previously published in Crazyhorse.

Jon Pineda is the author of the novel Let's No One Get Hurt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018).  His recent poetry collection Little Anodynes won the 2016 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Poetry.