The boy at the wheel has lost
his twin to suicide. His sister
sits between us as he barrels up
the narrow chute of old #36
with his brights on. He passes
a second car as I see the hint
of lights over the crest ahead,
and he is talking about guns, the kind
of gun he would choose to kill a man.
And I am certain he will kill us all
in this old truck he bought with his
brother to throw the morning paper.
He swerves back into our lane as
a car blares past, and I thrill
to the breath passing my lips.
~ Steven Hind
Steven is a retired teacher and part-time farmer whose personal experiences over seventy years in Kansas have inspired efforts at self-expression, often taking the form of poetry. His books include, Familiar Ground (Cottonwood), That Trick of Silence (CKS), In a Place with No Map (CKS/Woodley), and The Loose Change of Wonder (CKS/Woodley).
Tyler Sheldon is a graduate student in English at Emporia State University. His poems and articles have appeared in Thorny Locust, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, The Dos Passos Review, and in the anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties (a 2013 Kansas Notable Book). Sheldon is an AWP Intro Journals Award nominee and has been featured on Kansas Public Radio.
William Sheldon lives in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he writes and teaches. His work has appeared widely in little magazines and small press anthologies. He has two books, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley) and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth), and a chapbook, Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill). He plays bass for the band The Excuses.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 