Four Snakes Makes Our Flag

After Ashley M. Jones / After Mary Szbist

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Four Snakes Makes Our Flag

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1. silence so indigo it softens the end

2. of our sentences, how sunflower field

3. the day’s become I’m waiting for enough

4. wind to push the butterflies out into

5. flight while I drive through how fabulous to love

6. something capable of smoke curtain of

7. cattails what if I’ve never hurt the way

8. I do now what if a man a carcass

9. becomes after all and blackbirds above

10. so many dresses hanging on the clothesline

11. these clouds look like they’ll have no pity

12. on us, would we deserve it anyway

13. and the man carrying a bright red handkerchief

14. even his glistening says something about need

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C. T. SALAZAR is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. His debut full-length collection Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking is forthcoming from Acre Books in 2022. He's the 2020 recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Rumpus, Cincinnati Review, West Branch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, 32 Poems, and elsewhere.

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