Low in the sky, the shadowy moon
shawls your dirt road, your red barn
the shit-shuffled corral.
Black and abstract, pinion pines,
lone sentinels keep watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some nights roosting barn owls
mutter under their breaths\u2014
and you, pressed flat
by the thumbprint of your father,
whipped by the harsh words
of your mother\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n
secure your lasso to the rafter,
throw your Stetson to the
straw-strewn floor
and kick off your boots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Low in the sky, the shadowy moonshawls your dirt road, your red barnthe shit-shuffled corral.Black and abstract, pinion pines,lone sentinels keep watch. Some nights roosting barn owlsmutter under their breaths\u2014and you, pressed flatby the thumbprint of your father,whipped by the harsh wordsof your mother\u2014 secure your lasso to the rafter,throw your Stetson to thestraw-strewn floorand … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/josephhershmedia-1ZAduPYISHI-unsplash.jpg?fit=640%2C428&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1076,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions\/1076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Dale Champlin, an Oregon poet, has poems in The Opiate, Timberline Review, Pif, Willawaw, and elsewhere. Her first collection, The Barbie Diaries, was published in 2019, Callie Comes of Age, 2021, and Isadora, 2022. Dale loves nothing more that the scent of juniper and sage. Visit her at dalechamplin.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"