Matt Poindexter
lay cold-stunned, sunning on our churchyard slide. We found it wound into a coil. It seemed of sluggish blood. Beneath us, April steamed from fresh-spread mulch. It didn’t try to hide, just tasted nervous words we passed around. A small girl fetched her mom. A deacon appeared, a shovel in his hand. The Sunday schoolers cleared away in fear. The deacon scraped the snake to the ground, then drove the sharp edge of his shovel there, a plowshare beaten back into a sword. The body twisted sickly, the severed head at rest. It still might bite, the deacon said, so stay away. The sound of bells filled the air. We hurried inside to taste the blood of the Lord.
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Matt Poindexter is the author of the chapbook Fatherland (Unicorn Press, 2025). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Best New Poets series, The Missouri Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. A resident of Hillsborough, North Carolina, he can be found online at http://www.mattpoin.com.