Samantha Leigh Futhey
Auman’s Salvage
Spring Mills, PA
Wasps churn the air as you search
for the safety I insist on. Between
titanium vines, we weave in a valley
of smashed grilles and contorted school
bus skeletons, scouring the metallic graveyard
for seat belts. Twisted gates of stacked
cars line narrow corridors of trees,
hip bones of the Appalachians.
Ferns sprawl in ripped seats. Spiders
roost in glove compartments, the messy nest
of registrations absent. Coors cans
dust floors of pummeled Mazdas,
hoods punched with deer hooves.
We join other scavengers among maples
and pines to reclaim sudden wreckage,
our prizes in wires to solder new
starts. All those unexpected swervings
now marked in rust. Decay so ripe
on our lips: burnt rubber, love notes
coiled in poison ivy. Inside a Toyota pickup,
you meld into pine needles, shattered glass.
I lean away from you, safety unfurling
from your hands. Around us, men of slow
drawls rifle through bins of hub caps, searching
for another scrap to bend and shape. Above,
wasps hover, hives stitched with faulty
transmission wiring and pedals
feet once pushed in fateful directions:
histories rebuilt and reclaimed,
a house balanced on thinning branches.
Samantha Leigh Futhey completed an MFA in the Creative Writing and Environment Program at Iowa State University. She has poetry published or forthcoming in The Fourth River, Potomac Review, Zone 3, and Salamander, among others.
