Townspeople

Townspeople Kelly Gray (bio) While you both sleep, I walk down the highwayto find a flock of mangled trucks crashlanded in pullouts, ravines, and the backsideof the cemetery. Women from cabinstucked between bay trees emerge to tapedrawings of pitchforks to shattered windshields.Broken families with broken bodies crawlbetween the women's legs and into the woods. I walk back home to fortifythe fence line, but leave openingsbeneath bramble. A place for the animalsto drag belly, a place for my people to cut knee.I paint our gate red, nail two sparrows to the wood.I replace the hinges, lock the gate.The cat yowls and yowls, her mouth opento the cold birds. When you both wake,and I have told you of what I saw,we agree to leave bucketsof water and jackets at the foot of trees.Later that night, when you are asleep,I walk back down to the highway to removethe pitchforks, ashamed,of who I am when my family is sleeping. [End Page 50] Kelly Gray Kelly Gray is a writer living in the redwoods, nine miles and seven fence posts away from the ocean. Most recently, her writing can be found in The Tusculum Review, Lake Effect, Southern Humanities Review, Rust & Moth, Jet Fuel Review, Storm Cellar, Permafrost, and Action, Spectacle.