~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Joe Baumann

 Juice

My envy is a peach a pit a skin a pulse
a driver going the wrong way
a sandpit quickbit snakeskin shed
always sieving seizing tight concealing.
It wriggles it wraiths wraps wonders rots
on the side of the road
in the desert
in strip malls
that whistle with hollow ghosts
a puzzle a piss a cracked rib
a shortened fuse blown a rockslide an avalanche
that makes too much noise not enough nothing at all

 Joe Baumann is the author of three collections of short fiction, Sing With Me at the Edge of Paradise, The Plagues, and Hot Lips. His fiction and essays have appeared in Third Coast, Passages North, Phantom Drift, and many others. He possesses a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana–Lafayette. He was a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction. His debut novel, I Know You’re Out There Somewhere, is forthcoming from Deep Hearts YA. He can be reached at joebaumann.wordpress.com