Aaron Cance was born and raised in rural Wisconsin. He holds a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and an M.A. in British and American Literature from the University of Utah. He currently lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Katherine, and daughter, Viola Wren.
Almost Home
a country boy can drown himself
by walking to the center of a field
at night
..........undulating
....................waves
..............................of
...........................oats,
..........platinum in the moonlight,
thrust about rhythmically,
..........circumambiently,
....................in the fresh night wind.
thoughts play this way,
..........and forgetting is easy
..........under the indigo mythology of
...........................................the sky,
..........forgetting reprobate
....................physicality,
..........drifting on stems and seeds,
....................forgetting physicality,
..............................swooning,
..............................floating
finally, betrayed, clutching, instinctively,
..........the raft of earth beneath his feet
....................the bitter raft
....................that will carry him to
....................tomorrow
....................and tomorrow
....................and tomorrow
....................and tomorrow.
Testing the Water
in the darkness,
we walk across the ice,
a crackling casement
of death
daring drunk
mid-western boys
bored in thick
flannel with bourbon
bottles
the frozen shelf
gunshot pops
it is a game
to see what life
will give us,
to see what we
can take away
without
indictment