2 Poems | Eran Eads

Through Crow Legs

You must have been wheat, weak man
with withered crow­-leg eyes I climbed
inside. You came through the other side,
my closed legs, thighs: pillars of salt
treacherous and tasty. Did you taste me
when I was rain. Where was your soul sir
when I dug in the dearth of your gaze,
when I clung to eyelids and prayed

Lord let me through.

I was winter wheat that pleased you.
I was flower cut short, I was harvest ready
I was already through, and you breathless.
Whoever thought the body was more
than a tunnel, stick, thing to be chewed.
I’ve had you through and through
one side of the stock in my mouth,
the other eyes wide — and blooming.

Spruce Beetle

Boys burned them from the ass up
where the beetles had once breathed.
It was their way of saying we know
what you are, we will burn you.
I would watch them squirm in death,
I would watch them burning,
and I would look to how they burned.

— — — — — —
Growing up in a conservative wilderness commune in Alaska, Eran Eads was inspired to start
writing when the local librarian slipped him the works of Sylvia Plath and other poets underneath conventional book covers. Currently, Eran is attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in SOFTBLOW, Deep Water Literary Magazine, and Berkeley Poetry Review.