Two Poems by Audrey Walls

Audrey Walls

Audrey Walls

Audrey Walls' poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Booth, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, Handsome, The Pinch, storySouth, Unsplendid and elsewhere. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she is poetry editor of the online literary journal failbetter and an MFA candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Letter from Endicott Avenue
    for K.

The streets
    shed their sidewalks before you reach home-

a broken fence
    chainlink & crooked shutters. Driveway cracked

from the roots
    of an ash tree that ricocheted through the black soil

in every direction.
    We swore it led straight to hell. Come with me.

This time
    you need to listen for the rustle of phantoms

the guttercall
    of two ravens still lurking high in the branches.

Stand still
    in your rotting shoes. If you can hear their song,

tell me. Tell me
    you remember their laughter: the sound of two stones
           
cracking.

 

 

 

 

After Allison

Her skin is a memory
    of tobacco leaves
             not ash & paper
green smelling like she only
   
just left the fields near her mother's house
   
in South Hill
           where her cousins
home from tour
a second or third deployment

chime longnecks on the slouching porch

by the shoulderless road I see her
   
eyes dark
              & watery as if
                          they could swallow
devour me

    crocodile girl

show me

which parts of you
    are tattoo
    & which are scar.