they had captured the dog
decoy from the geese fields and
were using long strips of t shirt to
slingshot it from between the trees as far
she was taking a break to smoke
when she saw them all
hands on the wooden dog
the t shirts were not very stretchy
the dog not gaining much air
they kept trying and trying
the dog kept falling
inside, in very small letters on the wall:
one day my essence will come back
and I will sit in my skin at peace
hard to see maybe but essence was there
moving out over the geese fields
rustling between shadow grasses
spreading and darkening the sky to purple
down the road past the empty middle school,
through the stone tunnel, the train stop,
to the strip malls of dentists
wings and beer, insurance agents, maybe not
in her but still there
essence found a way over the asphalt
under the exhaust so everything
that hurt in the air, everything held off
hard to say how but
the wooden dog was flying
Kyra Spence is a poet from Pennsylvania. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Parentheses, Mantis, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and teaches at the University of Iowa.