Garden of Earthly Delights

Anna B. Sutton
Published on April 9, 2020

Chain link rattle, a line of boys jerk 
the dugout fence. Delicate fingers 
turn beastly, like talons, mouths 

buckling into barbarous
howls. Their parents applaud
from the bleachers. Under care

of a sitter, cover of the occasional clink 
of pint-sized bat to ball, my sister and I 
slip away with the rest, convent 

of bored girls drifting toward 
a blemish of undergrowth flourishing 
along the creek. We summit to decide 

our roles for play. A mother, busy 
with mud pies, I barely notice 
when a real man enters 

our ephemeral home. The other girls 
follow some resonant command, return 
to bleachers, wiping dirt 

from their hands. My sister embarks 
on her fatherly duty, a distant thicket, 
the promise of a palmful 

of berries. The man and I 
assess each other. He is tall, pleased 
in gray sweats. I am caked 

in red dust, kneeling by the creek. 
I imagine this is what he saw, though 
I am young and memory 

is a slippery thing, a crawfish 
discovered under a disturbed 
rock, then veiled by kicked-up silt. 

I was a flash of something 
edible. He was a damp hand 
holding the stone.
 

Genre: 
Poetry
Author Bio: 

Anna B. Sutton's work has appeared in Indiana Review, Third Coast, Copper Nickel, Booth, Los Angeles Review, and other journals. She received her MFA from University of North Carolina Wilmington and a James Merrill fellowship from Vermont Studio Center. She was a co-founder of the Porch Writers' Collective and has worked for numerous literary organizations, including Humanities Tennessee, Lookout Books, Blair Publisher, Gigantic Sequins, One Pause Poetry, Dialogist, and Ecotone. Her debut collection, Savage Flower, won the St. Lawrence First Book Prize and will be published by Black Lawrence Press in 2021.

Issue: 
62