"Culvert" by Matt Sumpter

I loved the toxic run-off, tentacles of algae, and corrugated zinc that tripped me as I hunched in the culvert, followingWill Macon’s echoing hard steps, listening to loaded pick-ups hammer overhead. All afternoon we’d spit tobacco juice, damn God, light firecrackers then watch the wick thrash in our hands.Darkness was our gift: him shrieking curses through a manhole cover as phosphenes gathered into faces, words I could almost read. Years later,Will blew open a friend’s cheek with a paintball gun, T-boned a mini-van while pulling vodka from a plastic jug.I stayed inside, but even now,I close my eyes and listen to my fingers’ distant traffic on the laptop keys.In the culvert, Will would whisperMove your ass, and stomp off to a different haunt. I would hesitate, as I do now, waiting for the tapping keys to sound like words, for oblivion, almost meaningful, to let me in. 

Matt Sumpter's poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Best New Poets 2014, and his fiction is forthcoming in Glimmer Train. His first collection, Public Land (University of Tampa Press, Forthcoming 2017), won the Anita Claire Scharf Prize. A graduate of the PhD program in Creative Writing at Binghamton University and the MFA program at Ohio State University, he is the Lead Narrative Designer on the immersive exercise app for iOS: MarchQuest.

Liquor, Michael McConnell water color on paper