The Earth Avails Quotes

“I am your little ram,
burying his muzzle in thick grass of your pasture,

folded by you at night, herded by day,
a dedicated dog nipping at my hocks.

The day will come for you to draw
the bright sickle of the moon

across my wooly throat.
Do it with love, without regret.”
― Mark Wunderlich, The Earth Avails: Poems

“A young man named for a god of fucking
rode his palomino next to my dun.”
― Mark Wunderlich, The Earth Avails: Poems

“Weeds grew, and I ignored my chores,
while the cat worried her tail of its most plumescent fur.

I saw my body, white as tallow,
my face framed by colorless hair,

noted my appetites, then put them aside,
walked and walked to wear it all away.”
― Mark Wunderlich, The Earth Avails: Poems

“In an early photograph I have, part of the town
goes up in flames – a premonition from the 1880s.

A group of women, corseted, skirts infested with lace,
watch from behind a buckboard as ash flings itself

into the sky. To the right the blur of a girl
rushes away like a ghost. No face. Hardly a form.

Just a hat and a dress, and news of a fire,
though no one is alive who knows her name.”
― Mark Wunderlich, The Earth Avails: Poems