Trash Day is always an accomplishment: I lug those full, stinking cans to the curb like I’m walking down the red carpet in an underfunded coronation for conquering another week, having spent the last seven days alternating between washing dishes and disarming intercontinental ballistic missiles buried beneath my home state: It was Monday I was digging them up when I saw a red-tailed hawk swoop down to snatch a field mouse for breakfast, a potent little detail too brief to be recorded by anyone, anywhere: a fact I savored as I resumed thrusting my rusted shovel blade into damp earth while predicting how high the tallgrass would get in the prime of midsummer, after phasing out all the bromides and destroying the giant underground silos, the line between sophistry and sophistication growing more noticeable by the second. — JESSIE SANCHEZ
Jessie Sanchez is a poet from Fort Collins, Colorado, who writes about the sublimity in the minutiae of life. The West Texas A&M graduate lives with her husband and three children, and her first full poetry collection is forthcoming this fall from Hidden Peak Press.