POETRY

Still Life of Central Valley with Riverbed & Hypodermic Needle 

By torrin greathouse     Auburn Witness Poetry Prize 2020 Honorable Mention
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Under the bridge, a city of blue
tarps ripples like a child imagines 
water. The snow flutters down 
like dove feathers, burnt moths, 
coats their azure waves like sea foam.

A perfect pastoral. I’m sorry

this is a lie. It never snows here
but the image is so much 
prettier if I don’t say ​ash,
if I don’t mention the plastic
bags filled with chemical flakes.

No matter how I cut this
story, there is always powder 
gathered, off-white, at the hem
of the mouth. No matter
which version I choose to tell
you, this image could still

kill me. Late fall, the foothills are ablaze

& each river is wedding-dressed
in steam, but under every bridge
in this city, the winter arrived 
years ago. It’s never left. Here,

the distance between a sleeping
bag & body bag reduces down 
to just temperature & chemistry.
I won’t tell you about the nights

spent there, buying, selling, half
-sleeping while a cement heaven
bent above me under the weight
of passing headlights. Illuminating

a field of fluorescent bottles, syringes

like stretched out stars. Down here, 
each depressed plunger is a broken dam,
emptied concept of a home, a man-
made flood. Beneath the skin, blue
rivers twist. A needle plunged 
beneath the surface, spills synthetic 
joy. Pond of ripples frozen mid-wave.

All the fish choke on the sudden heavy 
of their gills. Pollution, a sharp glint 
hooked in the throat. The rivers brittle 
& collapse. Lips cracked & needle-blissed,

a friend sleeps in the arroyo’s ash-flecked dust 
& will not wake. Fresno river—an open grave. 
I have only seen this river flow three times.

A sudden mud-gray thunder. The color of rats

after rain. It spilled from every gutter,  
drenched lawns, flooded streets, & returned  
each sacrifice we had given it. Clots gathering 
an exodus back to the heart. Car tires, green

tipped syringes, pocket change, condom 
wrappers, bullet casings, rusted bike 
chains & snapped skateboards, a family  
dog’s bones wrapped in so much white 
plastic you could almost mistake them 

for a child’s ghost.


torrin a. greathouse is a trans woman poet, cripple-punk, and MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. Her work is published in Ploughshares, New England Review, TriQuarterly, and the Kenyon Review. She is the author of Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed Editions, 2020).


VOLUME 53.3