Four Snakes Makes Our Flag
After Ashley M. Jones / After Mary Szbist
Four Snakes Makes Our Flag
silence so indigo it softens the end
of our sentences, how sunflower field
the day’s become I’m waiting for enough
wind to push the butterflies out into
flight while I drive through how fabulous to love
something capable of smoke curtain of
cattails what if I’ve never hurt the way
I do now what if a man a carcass
becomes after all and blackbirds above
so many dresses hanging on the clothesline
these clouds look like they’ll have no pity
on us, would we deserve it anyway
and the man carrying a bright red handkerchief
even his glistening says something about need
C. T. SALAZAR is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. His debut full-length collection Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking is forthcoming from Acre Books in 2022. He's the 2020 recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Rumpus, Cincinnati Review, West Branch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, 32 Poems, and elsewhere.