Gunny Sack You would never say to me for all your education you lack the knowledge of the deep down things, of cedar rings, what sister Rosie sings journeying far back across the field to a house where words are not as near as the meanings they convey; on the countertops there, a jarful of cascara bark with a nameless purpose far more felt, like how they would know where to walk when the stove went gunny sack; even before it was invented was this fixing known, the way to work, the how to cope, the prayers in Polish, the sitting just as you do now telling me a term never learned in balustered corridors, never mingling with lexicons of any kind, caught up in machinery in the woods and being more content to walk the cow home ten miles by a back road to a familiarity without definition that is its own provenance, showing me that I, too, come from there.
Cantilevers You catch my eye and hang there for a moment, suspended only by the force of attraction, looming over the ground to provide a pleasant expanse of air in which to breathe, to pass through, to pause and collect like crosswalk stops and moments of those beheld gazing only briefly before fording the road or pressuring the accelerator pedal forward. An imprint is left grafted in space roadside for me to ponder later, an image needing no ulterior supports that I can bring on the bus and read for a while, that I remember while running, that simply stays where you are and where I am, too, a promontory spirit structurally sound across distances, projecting greatly in relation to its depth, permitting me never to forget you. I am bewildered by suspense, surprised to see no obvious foundation, nor itinerant crowd nearby, and to know that you extend just so and would not have it any other way gives me a horizontal assurance of a strength, mysterious and strange, that will not change, that vexes and hangs.
Luke Janicki lives in Seattle, WA. He has previously published work in the Gonzaga University literary journal Reflection and in America Magazine. He has his M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame.