Justin Howerton

Life in Pay-Per-View

The carousel spins like a slot machine. Today:
cracks in horses’ hooves, a pair
of deer behind a sleigh. Tomorrow: the red
eye of a dragon, marbled
and dead, or a fingernail wedged in the ear
of a lion. Memory has four seasons
like Virginia, each little history predictable
as hail, each wound unsutured by the wrong
green of a leaf, the right turn
-signal of a passing car. I’m tired of being
my own emergency responder. I need
to bed career or parenthood, build
a worry taller than my own
shadow, get off the ride. I need a son
to fake-steer the camel away from all
my footprints like every father
wants. Like I know better. I want
to not know better. I want to un
-learn that away
is towards in a different
language. My dad learned too
late. He’s decades-glued to a panther,
circling the center of a nothing we’re both too scared
to poke, as tired as an animatronic
two beats from his last hello.

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Justin Howerton is a first-year MFA candidate at Louisiana State University. Born and raised in Memphis, he received his BA from Lewis & Clark College in Oregon and promptly returned to the South. He writes about the pull of memory, the lies we wish were true and the magic of cars. His recent work can be found in The West Trade Review among other places.