Fields, ca. 1968
C. Wade Bentley
there are no houses in these fields yet
just hoary cress white tops curly cup
gumweed dumped roof shingles and jack-
hammered concrete but mostly knee-high
grass so that a boy as he kicks along gathers
seeds in the cuffs of his pants burdock
burs in his socks yellow and red winged
grasshoppers leap out ahead rasping clicking
alighting on milkweed leaves along the fence
now nearing the other side the broken brown
glass of Coors bottles catches the sun and here
cached between rocks two pages of faded
porn he stashes in his pocket for later
next to the ten dollars of his two-week pay
one of which he will slap down on the counter
for a hamburger fries and strawberry shake
hell make it two barkeep he says when sixth-grade
Evelyn walks in hot and sweet as a summer day
C. Wade Bentley lives, teaches, and writes in Salt Lake City. His poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Cimarron Review, Best New Poets, and Western Humanities Review, among others. A full-length collection of his poems, What Is Mine, was published by Aldrich Press in early 2015.