This is the last 2 a.m. song fit for poling a johnboat through the swamp
so we may glide, quiet enough, to catch frogs with our hands.

It's the year Robertlee can't afford a suit to take me to prom.

Our flashlights tell the difference between alligators & sunken logs
adrift in the dark.

This year Emmyjean's daddy shows us how he guts a deer.

As for the girls, we'd rather be kissing. We've practiced our kissing
on each other—shy as spotted fawns.

We know the boys sometimes meet for a circlejerk in an empty barn.

This is the canvas bag we keep frogs in, once they are caught. It
will hold thirteen by dawn.

It's the year we learn to sew a pleat & stew a coon in Home Ec.
T.J. Corbett has such long arms—the boat don't tip when he leans out
over the rim.

This year, we can't all read well enough to fill in class ring forms.

We've never been so aware of skin—the full bag is an organ beating
on the floor of the boat.
We barely contain our joy.

This is the year the principal measures the acre between our knees
& the hems of our skirts.

We dock the boat & break the backs of frogs against a stone.

We know they are dead when their tongues unfurl. This is the last
newborn light licked between cypress trunks.

Lunch ladies from here serve fried okra & jambalaya.

The round spot behind each animal eye is an ear—here we circle
the head's globe with a single knifeslice.

Though all year we've swerved to miss guineas by the schoolyard.

We push our thumbs under the edge of skin at the throat to loosen
slick bodies from the green.

This is the year: the dark, the boat, the sunken suits & watery forms,

the catch & kiss, damp canvas, split rib, dawn & entrails in the grass—
we cut the feet last—in the pleated heat—

then wipe our blades across our thighs & call this happiness.