Country Music

There’s a deer on a tavern wall
in Pennsylvania, Christmas lights
blinking behind the bar. A woman and a man
are slowly dancing, hanging on
to everything, the rainy hills,
a truck slicing through the fog,
an old pit bull staring
at a football from the end of the world,
thirty feet of galvanized chain.
The song ends, the couple laughs.
They are making nothing great again.
They know it too—that’s the joke.
The deer never blinks.

Mark Jackley’s poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Sugar House Review, Talking River, and other journals. He lives in Purcellville, VA.

Appears In

Issue 13

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