Corn Truck Overturns On Main Street
Semi trailer filled from silos,
tidal wave of last year’s golden crop.
Traffic stopped, doorways blocked,
old men in the coffee shop
tapping their canes on glass
excited to be trapped.
Baby in its stroller, wide eyes
filled with so much yellow,
some yahoo in a four wheel drive
plows in, does doughnuts,
spraying kernels like hail and bullets,
sheriff stays in his cruiser
remembering a convoy
and a roadside bomb.
Someone flies their drone
to document this news
where news never happens,
climbing up above
camera sweeps around
to capture endless fields
freshly tilled, waiting to be planted,
and down on the road
a pastor on his bike,
heading out of town
on a long ride
to get his sermon right,
imagining August,
his favorite month,
with tall corn
for miles and miles,
hot and sighing
with Nature’s breath.
Steve Brammell’s poems, short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Alabama Magazine, Birmingham Magazine, RavensPerch, Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, White Wall Review, The Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Write Launch, Flying Island Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Toho Journal and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Finishing Line Press has just published his book of short stories, Red Mountain Cut. He has also enjoyed a parallel career in the restaurant and wine business for the past 25 years. He is a graduate of Wabash College and a member of the Indiana Writers Center. He lives in Indianapolis.