PROSE POETRY

LAURIE KLEIN

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SCAPEGOAT

Boating day, comes a squally wind and their trusty ark goes rogue near the dam—crazed slue of the bow, hull groaning above runaway current sluicing over the spillway where any kid in a life vest knows blue chaos thunders forever—oh, headlong stun of water, roar and peril mustering force as her uncle, shirtless, flails at the oars, knuckles slicked with spray. Afterward, she wades alone in the shallows, shanghaies a leech, drops it into a paper cup. Shakes in salt. Children try to
protect their grownups, sometimes rely on charms. She’d like to apologize now for the way those wormy garments of flesh fizzed and split, little jacket of foam minus its buttons.

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​Laurie Klein is the author of Where the Sky Opens and Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Southwest Review, SPRR, Atlanta Review, MAR, Every Day Poems, and other journals and anthologies. She lives in the Inland Northwest.

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