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.