Tanner Pruitt

NEST

Make of me a creature one could make
A mount of, or drape a mantle
With the shag coat of, a long white
Trimmed with tassels shag coat of

The kind you’d stash for summers
In the ever deeper walk-in closet
Of the house you always dream of.

Make of me the boy who stared his eyes out
In the sun and picked apart the pieces, broken
Globes of his conviction, though the notion

Of an act like that’s one we’d neither of us
Dream of, but for the familiar burning
Need of making a place there is no doubt
A body or a part of one or one of us belongs.

TANNER PRUITT is a poet from Macon, Georgia. He studied creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Virginia. He lives in San Francisco.