The Runaway
Ashby Neterer (Oxford University)
Blinkered by the sun’s cruel smile
that forced creased eyes to trace the sand,
the runaway piled mile on mile
while drunk wind danced on fractured land.
Fissured fractals of the salt-flat crust
cloned the valleys of arid lips;
desiccated cells and dust
prophesied her life’s eclipse.
While liquid fire filled her lungs,
she hoarded stride on greedy stride,
defying heat and noonday sun
where mirages and the truth collide.
The runaway knew not home nor bed,
for all life’s comforts passed her by,
and when she next laid down her head,
she feared she’d lay it down to die.
So on she pressed to greet the day
with a stone-set gaze and jealous grin,
for wherever her burnt body lay,
she’d never be a slave again.
Ashby Neterer is the Torrance Scholar of Theology at the University of Oxford. He has poems published or forthcoming in the Garnett Literary Magazine, Deronda Review, and Bollman Bridge Review among other outlets. Past writing has won the Rhop Writing Prize and the Phi Beta Kappa Jones Prize. In his free time he plays jazz piano and dances Cuban Salsa.
