“McQueen” by Ryan Clark

for McQueen, Oklahoma

A making is caught
between folding and
nothing. Years only
extend the sound
of a community
when they are
kept in a memory
held local by a people
near and unfolded.

At the Harmon/
Jackson line,
McQueen is an
unincorporated
touching of area,
sound clung
to a highway four
miles east of Gould.

Who is there
among this
short of ghosts.

Who is enough
to remember the town
when the fade of McQueen
is too near.


Screen Shot 2020-01-31 at 1.45.41 PMRyan Clark is obsessed with puns and writes his poems using a unique method of homophonic translation. He is the author of How I Pitched the First Curve (Lit Fest Press, 2019), and his poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in Yemassee, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tahoma Literary Review, Flock, Aufgabe, and Posit. He is a winner of the 2018 San Antonio Writers Guild contest, and his work has been nominated for Best of the Net. He currently teaches creative writing at Waldorf University in Iowa.