Welcome Introduction Contents

Dennis Dowthitt

The girls are young buttonwoods, he decides.
Their mottled trunks will shed their camouflage:
a tan and silvery fuzz of bark
that peels back to expose the skin.

While dragging
her to the rear of his truck he thinks, I’m fucking sick
of selling cars in Humble.

He’d walked this pipeline for hours as a kid,
see-sawing from foot to foot. Humming.

He knew all the best places
where the trees grew together tightly,
arthritic against the scud. The rottenest of trees
would hollow out, overnight it seemed.

In a woody crevice he’d hidden a tin race car
and a cheap bottle of beer, tied in a bundle with rope.

(At the bowling alley she'd glanced at him
and his son. He’d felt young, like a buck.)

I	am	so
sorry for	what y'all	had
to go	through.	I am so
sorry	for what	all of
you	had to	go
through.	I can't	imagine
losing	two	children.
If	I	was
y'all,	I would	have
killed	me.	You
know?	I am	really
so	sorry	about it
I really	am. I got	to go
sister,	I	love
you.	Y'all take	care
and God	bless	you.
Gracie	was	beautiful
Tiffany	was	beautiful.
You had	some	lovely
girls	and I	am
sorry.	I	don't
know	what	to
say. All	right,	Warden,
let's	do	it.

The bundle’s still there in the damp mulch 
and rodent shit. The race car’s wheels are frozen up, 
the paintwork chipped. Fucking ruined, he thinks and throws 
her against the pipe where a small crack 
pisses water. 

Nothing is working right today.

His son’s trousers are saturated around the zipper
and the wind is raining seeds in spiralling parachutes, 
their pubescent shed irritating 
his eyes until they swell, weepy and red.