Seven Poems by Katherine Duckworth
Wading through iapetus, again.
He said the neighborhood had
been gentrified long ago, so,
it was fine, and it was so.
We were not reachable by land
and, the tomatoes were mostly bad.
Herons picked off the bullfrogs in
The field.
To become the animal that can kill
and leave
What is the State Fossil?
***
We rode down probably
too early in the year to see them. It
all turns to pine so quickly, and so
quickly the pine makes a blanket of
itself over a fallow field. Loblolly
is what they make the telephone poles
out of. Nancy did a little baptist jig
and said she was lucky that her lines
were buried.
The Green Salamander is what we were
after, in the shaded limestone outcrops.
***
You know it’s dove season because of the pattern of shots cracking and then echoing across the kudzu. Forty paces from a Live Oak with Moss, forty paces from a holding facility
***
I think I was about 6. I was riding my bicycle between
the two fields. They’ll turn their stomachs out of their mouths—gastric eversion.
And using my hand, like a heron, I lifted the bullfrog from the flooded tractor rut,
and placed it on the mantel.
***
We aren’t so sure about them. Even their taxonomic classification.
Subspecies of the Gray wolf, or a Coyote mutt? We went to a ribbon ceremony
for their reintroduction. I waited for the pack of Red wolves
to cut the ribbon with their teeth. We camped again near the battlefield.
I listened for them, and might have seen a ghost. The Red wolves were
eventually assimilated. Albert Ambrose Kelly, ruddy complexion, captured at Fort Donelson,
and again at Yazoo City. Spent the whole war in prison,
paid out, paroled, and walked home. In August 2025
there were sixteen puppies on the landscape, and now there are ten
with reflective collars, the source population being from southern Louisiana.
All the other sources have nearly dried up.
***
When I am playful, I lift the gar from the silted bank
A woburn in her habit
occupying a territory.
Just the creek running through. I can bury the lines. I can slide between a river stone
and a wet place, nearly pterotrigonia, waiting for your spine
to develop.
***
Posterior presentation, the doe pushed the baby away. Not Mabel. One of the younger ones. My Betty in
her field. Is it a soul thing? The work? Which tongue for testimony? Every text is a death notice. The
culture that hinges on decay. Forms a slab. He said there were no physical paper dollars in the forties. He
said it is more about the form on the waters of the New River. We’re crossing over now, just haw of the
fault line.
Katherine Duckworth is a poet from Tennessee. She is the author of Slow Violence (Beautiful Days 2023)
He said the neighborhood had
been gentrified long ago, so,
it was fine, and it was so.
We were not reachable by land
and, the tomatoes were mostly bad.
Herons picked off the bullfrogs in
The field.
To become the animal that can kill
and leave
What is the State Fossil?
***
We rode down probably
too early in the year to see them. It
all turns to pine so quickly, and so
quickly the pine makes a blanket of
itself over a fallow field. Loblolly
is what they make the telephone poles
out of. Nancy did a little baptist jig
and said she was lucky that her lines
were buried.
The Green Salamander is what we were
after, in the shaded limestone outcrops.
***
You know it’s dove season because of the pattern of shots cracking and then echoing across the kudzu. Forty paces from a Live Oak with Moss, forty paces from a holding facility
***
I think I was about 6. I was riding my bicycle between
the two fields. They’ll turn their stomachs out of their mouths—gastric eversion.
And using my hand, like a heron, I lifted the bullfrog from the flooded tractor rut,
and placed it on the mantel.
***
We aren’t so sure about them. Even their taxonomic classification.
Subspecies of the Gray wolf, or a Coyote mutt? We went to a ribbon ceremony
for their reintroduction. I waited for the pack of Red wolves
to cut the ribbon with their teeth. We camped again near the battlefield.
I listened for them, and might have seen a ghost. The Red wolves were
eventually assimilated. Albert Ambrose Kelly, ruddy complexion, captured at Fort Donelson,
and again at Yazoo City. Spent the whole war in prison,
paid out, paroled, and walked home. In August 2025
there were sixteen puppies on the landscape, and now there are ten
with reflective collars, the source population being from southern Louisiana.
All the other sources have nearly dried up.
***
When I am playful, I lift the gar from the silted bank
A woburn in her habit
occupying a territory.
Just the creek running through. I can bury the lines. I can slide between a river stone
and a wet place, nearly pterotrigonia, waiting for your spine
to develop.
***
Posterior presentation, the doe pushed the baby away. Not Mabel. One of the younger ones. My Betty in
her field. Is it a soul thing? The work? Which tongue for testimony? Every text is a death notice. The
culture that hinges on decay. Forms a slab. He said there were no physical paper dollars in the forties. He
said it is more about the form on the waters of the New River. We’re crossing over now, just haw of the
fault line.
Katherine Duckworth is a poet from Tennessee. She is the author of Slow Violence (Beautiful Days 2023)
