Click here to read the next poem.   Small Town Matters (a sestina) By Tim Harnett     On city limit outskirts stands a used car dealership. Chevrolet’s sparkle under fluorescent lighting. Towards town, red brick ranchers become la casa of choice. Cows spray their routine into rusty   buckets. Fenced ponies can’t escape rusted chicken-wire cages, nor flee to fields where cars sleep in dirt coffins, primer paint sprayed with dents and nicks. Underneath, foxes build dens, kits crying to become fully grown. Vixens raid town   dumpsters for leftover chicken. Townies know, in every kitchen corner stands a ready, rusted shotgun. Only five fox pelts to become a local hero. Cars speed across overpasses, underside spray-painted   gray, El Nino ’85. A fine spray of hydrant water drenches town children; they play freeze-tag under guard of orange streetlights. One forgotten, rusty padlock bids a mongrel car entrance. Initiation, boy becomes   man. “Dig up a grave, you’ll become one of us.” Sweat sprays the teen’s forehead. He works by carlight, egged on by town bullies downing cheap beer. He digs with rust-colored spade, burrowing under   sod. Time drags. Under this cloudy sky, the teen stops; he cannot become like this gang of faces. He runs, scrambles over a fence, ignoring rusty links passing infections, spraying blood into air. He heads for town, leaving shouts behind. The gang’s car   paces him under heaven. Speakers spray rock music like a pesticide. Boys become dogs, chase the town runt to a derelict railroad lot; corner him in a rust-wounded car.     © Copyright, Tim Harnett   Click here to read Tim Harnett’s Brief and Bizarre Bio.   Click here to read the next poem.