We were wild and determined that night,

me sixteen, firm and flowering,

needing to be loved.

He was just some guy from school,

looking older than eighteen,

football player in the newspaper.

I never spoke two words to him

before that night.

 

We sat at a round kitchen table

among the spring bloom of kitchen wallpaper,

passed the bottle across the table, spinning

like a roulette wheel.

 

I stood up, fell down and everything

went black.

 

Then he was a dark form below me,

guiding my amateur hips.

 

Later I could hardly walk,

barely sit,

and he was gone.

So I draped across the gridded weave

and lattice back of the chair,

a picked flower,

and drank.

 

Joy Beshears holds a BA from Salem College and an MFA in Creative Writing from  Queens University of Charlotte. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and  anthologies including Surreal South, Main Street Rag, BREVITY, Southern Gothic Online,  R-KV-R-Y Quarterly, Poet’s Canvas, THRIFT, In the Yard: A Poetry Anthology, Mountain Time, and Caesura.  Her poem, “Rapture” was chosen by Kathryn Stripling Byer as Honorable Mention in  the 2006 NC State Poetry Contest.

Rachel Kertz was born in a small town in Missouri in 1988. While earning her degree at Southeast Missouri State University, she became interested in photography and began using her commutes as excuses to go on long drives through the rural countrysides, hoping to find locations and abandoned houses to photograph. She hopes to convey relatable stories in her images that speak to her audience on themes such as loneliness, love, exploration, and the feeling of being alone in unconventionally beautiful places. You can find more of her work here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/atticgirl/