PROSE POETRY
MELINDA RUTH
DUNDALK, MD 2006
Because we were seventeen sippin’ Khalua & cream, readin’ porn on a computer older than us, back when we knew every word to every song in Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, not knowin’ that the opposite of down isn’t up but center & wonderin’ if every open mouth was a gift, every chatroom screenname a curse taking us a little closer to a sin we knew nothin’ of but when you’re a year from graduating there’s no greater thrill than an older man or train tracks laddering past our house, wishin’ one day we could hop the rails & hitch cross-country carrying a pound of backyard dirt in our pockets.
Melinda Ruth has pieces featured or forthcoming in The Emerson Review, Pleiades, Red Earth Review, Sierra Nevada Review and more. Her chapbook, “A Name Among Bone,” has been listed as a semi-finalist in the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Contest through Black Lawrence Press. She is an MFA candidate at the Arkansas Writers Workshop and a reader at Arkana Magazine.