Listen: there is a lamb hanging in a tree by the Chattahoochee,
All night it hung there and sang till 3 am.
Those who hear it feel a hurt and think they’re hearing
The spring-song of the mockingbird.
Say: Sit up in your bed, then lay yourself back down if you can.
In October night-wind, the lamb’s head
Sways back and forth, and shines bright-black skin
The way moonlight shines on cotton fields and train tracks miles away.
The lamb’s fingers and toes cry for the body. Some boys
Hacked them off. It was harder work than they imagined.
The lamb cried like a man and struggled hard. But they finished
The job and ran off into the darkness that seems to hide
Everything. Men hang the bleeding body…

Judith Roney’s work has appeared in numerous publications. Most recently, her chapbook, Waiting for Rain, received an honorable mention from Two Sylvias Press, and Field Guide for a Human was a 2015 finalist in the Gambling the Aisle chapbook contest. Her poetry collection, According to the Gospel of Haunted Women, received the 2015 Pioneer Prize. She confesses to an obsession with …

Once we've latched the windows and deadbolted doors, we begin inventing our own monsters. Like most vile things, they’re scarier from afar but more believable as they get closer. Wielding machetes and hatchets, meat cleavers and baseball bats, but all the violence stops just short of the screen, even as we close our eyes and burrow deep into the false comfort of couch cushions. But now my friend says she hates horror, after her sister’s high school was splintered by gunfire one morning. Every murder onscreen feels like a gut punch in reality. Every sanctuary interrupted by a girl covered in blood, running and shrieking down a hallway. How she waited quietly, crouched in a bathroom stall, for death to arrive. But it didn't. And of course, it won’t, until it’s ready. Anxiety locked inside the cage of our bodies, incessantly banging, pleading to escape.

Musical composition by Victor David Sandiego

Adrian S. Potter writes poetry and prose in Minnesota. He’s the author of the fiction chapbook Survival Notes and is currently at work on a full-length poetry collection. Some publication credits include North American Review, Roads & Bridges, Jet Fuel Review, and Kansas City Voices.