Kelly R Samuels

Spinney

Forestry: small wood, often thick with thorns

Trespass wouldn’t take long
but could be dangerous.

You were always looking down for sure footing
and would miss the stout thorn—the sharp stab of it

followed by welling and beading.

They used barbed wire to mark the lot
all those years ago when I was called a girl
and kinder. So I’m familiar with that kind of pain: 

the hook greater than the burr we would tenderly extract
from her paw late summer. 

This quick, cruel retort—what leaves a long, bright scar
that only pales with time.

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Kelly R Samuels is the author of the full-length collection All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books) and two chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, Court Green, MAYDAY, Opt West and RHINO. She lives in the Upper Midwest.