boys chomped on scythed wild flowers
     twirled stems with their tongues

& lounged on old mattresses 

dragged out to the far end
of the dandelion field

a catcher's mitt tossed to the side / grass stains blessed their shins

                they were lost boys / boys whose elegies 

were already innumerable
                whose eyes were sliced
                from sawdust shavings
        
    all day I wanted them to notice me / to pin me down / to beast me into something I wasn’t
                & so I stepped on a nail
                poking straight out of a stray beam
                I screamed & I screamed 

    for I had always been the girl who cried wolf / only one lost boy came to me
        
& carried me like a slain wolf
into one of the unfinished houses 

laid me on a slab of marble
making snow angels
in sheets of sawdust

I could smell my foot
dripping with tetanus & blood

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Meaghan Quinn teaches and lives in Northampton, MA. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for The Tishman Review and holds an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Bennington College. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets. Her poems have been published in 2River Review, Adrienne, Free State Review, Triggerfish, and others. Aaron Graham