E.M. Woodruff


It’s no forest, though it has some fine cedars. Mostly a flat kind of city. Toledo, so windy it fills my
head—not really a howl: a mythic misnomer.—when its full body wakes me at night: what name
does that river carry? Dream supplanter. Though, I’d wish it torn me away last night. The trees
still grow querulous as ever up here out of the forest. Brother creaking against brother. Never
parting, just throw on in a line just like that. The sky is different, worse a bit, still capable of
making you think God knew every blue crayon that was going into the big box. Just, this sky is
cut by houses and not a train of three or four doe standing in perfect frame of a sun going below
the horizon, but we got wild cats prowling in late noon like they can tread fire.

E.M. Woodruff is a writer from rural Ohio.