Kerry James Evans was born in Alabama and is a recipi­ent of the Academy of American Poets Prize. He served six years in the Army National Guard as a combat engineer and attends the doctor­ate program in creative writing at Florida State University. Evans’s debut collection is entitled Bangalore (Copper Canyon Press, 2013). He lives in Tallahassee.

An Instance of Love

by Kerry James Evans

          Reader, it doesn’t matter what you think

happened to those wheat fields

reaped by the slow

              threshing of steel.

I wouldn’t consider the possibility of mice.


              Nor would I remember a childhood disease,

      a drop-off point,

                         or even the multicolored

                                  ball pit

                                          of ketchup and syringes.

People on couch
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