Strawberries
by Jeff Burt
A ghetto’s surrounded without a fence, canals from the delta on two sides, a country road with a fence on another, a foreign language, demands of documents, fear on every missing page, adobe abodes one-hundred square, bunked four to six in picking season, a strange collection of hats and colorless scarves left in orange garbage barrels, and at least this ghetto travels, north as the necessary hands reap, south as a second crop flowers, yellow bus on the brown dirt by the portable toilets with enough starlings to clog the sky as the mucked boots kick against the large bald tires in the fields where gratitude begins
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, spending the seasons dodging fires, floods, earth-shaking, and all the other scrambling life-initiatives. He has contributed to Heartwood, Tiny Seeds Journal, Vita Poetica, and Willows Wept Review. He has a chapbook for free download at Red Wolf Editions and a second chapbook available from Red Bird Chapbooks. Website: www.jeff-burt.com