Quotes and Poems: Day 25

Quote:

"True friends are always together in spirit."

Poem:

Striplings

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BY ATSURO RILEY

1. FIELD

Truck a passel (a poke) of wildling boys

We call ourselves (our pack) the orphan-slaves

Upcountry — loosed from mothers

Farmed out for scratch by mamas

Pale (pink-backed) tobacco-crew

Bossed by peeled-stick (breakback) donkey-switch

Tarred cropper-force

Forced cropper-line

Right far afield past Social Knob

Dark welty field near Luris

2. BUNKHOUSE

Most nights the boy they called Tynan

suppered us with scrapple from a can. Or some black-eyes

he'd've road-begged; a quarter-peck of crowders

scrounged off vines.

The broad back-skin on the tallest boy

—a (spreading) welt-weave, a lattice.

Last good gloam-minute after work

we'd strip off there in the side-yard, yawping; taking turns

de-tarring un-burning

arc-aiming cool hose-spray each on each.

Eleven of us / chigger-scritches, scablets.

Eleven of us / none of us clean.

Where the boss of us bore down

on us — our rank of   bedrolls on the floorboards — one and

one and one, eleven of us — ranked sack-beds

on floorboards — boots of — black breath of — the boss

of us bearing down on us — ain't none

of us (not a one of us) clean.

3. AFTER-ROAD

And so (the heaving) boys got trucked to CANDY'S STOP

up Hwy. 52 one night and dumped.