Seeds explode like fire against the neighbor’s garage
or hang mortified like bodies
from the sycamore out front.
My father walks with leaden pipe in hand
(dog insurance, he says)
as downstreet the Akita runs his length of iron chain,
hoping it will snap.
I am barefoot and fifteen
and the concrete boils before me
into the hallucinatory shimmer of the street.
I run out like time,
And life itself hangs in the balance.
Bio: Tyler Sheldon is the Press Manager for Flint Hills Review, and is a Creative Writing student at Emporia State University. His poetry has been published in numerous journals, such as Tulgey Wood, Quivira, Periphery, Thorny Locust, and eleven to seven, and is forthcoming in I-70 Review. The 2012 anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices featured his poem “Fall” alongside work by Kansas Poet Laureates Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and Denise Low. He has self-published a chapbook, Being (American). tyrsheldon@gmail.com
Guest Editor Diane Wahto has an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University. Her poem, “Someone Is Always Watching,” won the American Academy of Poets award. Recently, her poems “The Conspiracy of Coffee” and “After the Storm” were published in Active Aging. She, her husband, and two dogs live in Wichita, Kansas. dwahto@cox.net
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 