Midwestern Gothic Road Trip
Sage Justice

Frost clings to the corn fields
that line roads with no painted lines,

no names, just numbers like prisoner
9860 trudging through solemn dirt.

A billboard warning HELL IS REAL stands
outside the house with its roof  sunken

like a boulder dropped on the family
that called it home. It’s antler shedding season–

ribbons of  red flesh hang from a buck’s head
as it darts from fields to quaking aspens

whose eyes haunt the cloven imprints left in the earth.
HELL is indeed REAL in Indiana, its devils crossing

the corn fields late at night when the January winds
tousle the tresses of  the aspens and its angels’ bones

are buried beneath the fallen leaves, golden and raw,
dipped in honey and blood.

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