By Bryce Emley
Sometimes one feels the need of ordinary things
— Charles Wright
Sometimes a filled glass makes thirst exist,
the way a match doesn’t just
mean fire, but the opportunity for a trashcan full of charred pine
shards,
the way a dog doesn’t need a ball but a reason
to chase,
the way gravity doesn’t stop trying to pull your
spine down through itself until it straps you to a bed and releases.
Sometimes one doesn’t even feel need.
Sometimes need trellises one’s veins and grabs handfuls of the soil inside one’s chest, asking any ordinary thing on this goddamn good earth to fulfill it.
Bryce Emley is a freelance writer/editor and has served on staff with The Florida Review, H_NGM_N, and BULL. His writing can be found in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, The Pinch, Pleiades, and other places; he writes regularly for Matador Network.
