Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

I Never Learned How to Speak

Ache in the legs all
tendons tangled up
not sore just tight
from galloping
across hard surface
packed dirt across
which
water does not
seep in to nourish but
instead
pools and floods
and that is what it is like
trying to have a conversation sometimes
but in any case I’ve
been running
like a dog which has finally
gotten out of the house in which
its owner and his partner have
been arguing for days over
trivial shit which dogs do not
give a shit about
who sees the screen door catch
and takes his chance because
even the risk of getting hit by a car
is better than being trapped in here.
The rain water is coming
not to nourish but to drown
opening up
from some angry mouth in the sky
gods shouting in voices
we once understood
and the legs
are still bundled
for the first time my lungs
can outpace the muscles each
exhale a whoop crying to
keep moving keep moving
like I am my own cattle and herder at
the same time
so as not to get trapped
or hit.

Jillian Boger is from Massachusetts and lives in Rhode Island. She writes, teaches, and sometimes even teaches writing. She has driven her 2019 Toyota Corolla across most of the contiguous United States in an effort to see how long she can get the original car struts to keep saying, “Let’s Go Places.” She intermittently posts visual art on her Instagram, @floweringheads.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx