Shaun Perkins lives in Locust Grove, Oklahoma, where she is the curator of the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry. 

Morgana in the Yard
By Shaun Perkins

I still show up to find out
what happened to me
and the rest of us, to know how a plot
continues without the characters,
how my turn of phrase
feels in someone else’s mouth,
in a different land, in a
country beyond our imagining.

I live in a small house down a dirt road
My husband leaves for the paper plant,
three hours before my children
ride the bus to school.
I hang out the laundry on line
strung between rusted poles
a few feet from the line of woods
that angles down a ravine
to the muddy Grand River.

I look for mystery everywhere,
in the scissortail diving from
the telephone pole, in my daughter
with her beautiful, useless art,
in the monster truck igniting dust
into a storm that leaves
caterpillar trails on the white sheets
that have been dry for hours.