by Max Gregg
Poetry
it doesn’t matter which town you’re from, the boys are all the same. big rigs and realtree and drive-through chew spit at your feet. colton, barefoot, squatting in a vacation home until the boys located him, hunted down with paintball guns. i don’t know, the new kid looks a little european. i’d let him take me out behind the shed. in winter the stacks of logs will pile up on the metal beds of semitrucks and turn slick, soaked through with rain. i saw that couple from the city, touring acreage. did you hear the news? the body found near the bunker was decapitated. the killer came from elsewhere. they found his body in a river. it doesn’t matter where you’re from so long as you are the wrong kind of person. i am in the river, letting river water run over pebbles and my white legs with their gooseflesh. i go numb up to the knees. if i stay here long enough i’ll see. the cows. they walk on rocks and stumble across this part, farmer steering them to the other side where there are pastures. bald eagle wheeling through the sky, the pines so tall they make my head spin. once in the woods i met a man who told me how to make it out of the woods. he sniffed me like a wolf. you’re going on a date with him? i asked my mom. i like men who are like animals, she says. we’re on our way to the city. she’s in the back seat. i skip whatever tracks i want.
Max Gregg is from Stanwood, Washington. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sonora Review, Tiny Spoon, Afternoon Visitor, Poetry Daily, Iterant, Permanent Record: Poetics Toward the Archive (Nightboat), _______figuration: an anthology of trans writers (Gnashing Teeth), and elsewhere. They were a 2024 Lambda Emerging Writer and hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia (2025).