Escaping our Prairie Town

Unemployed we bulldozed through the streets
and waited for the dusk to cover us.
We searched for ways to rise above our veins
filled with the oily blood of our fathers’ past,
the DNA of a roughneck’s full regrets.
We knotted the shoes of soda machines and pulled.
They fell.  We watched as they ached and belched
their twelve ounce cans. We gathered them up
in the hope of trading them for a six-pack of beer,
then drove away and laughed our pirate laughs,
our thoughts of transcending that lonely place
surrounded by a sagebrush moat we knew
too well. We finished at the edge of town
and listened to the wind screaming to get out.

By Aden Thomas

Biography:

Aden Thomas grew up in the blue collar communities of central Wyoming. His work has appeared in The Kentucky Review, The Inflectionist Review, and Third Wednesday. He now lives north of Denver, Colorado.