On Forester Pass
we shot the
shit, crowing to those who
didn’t know us, avatars of who
we wanted
to be. Can-
dies crushed to confetti
in our packs, bragging about where we lived.
We jocked up
Tennessee
for eleven listeners.
What we’d done & did and done & mucked.
Frozen nights,
golden eyes
of the unknown. Miles back
we’d passed on ruses to booze-off
the trail. You
could see through
bandages over wounds.
The air was so dry, cracks split that lake
with a girl’s
name kicking
in it. That day we went
live on ourselves, tripwiring ourselves
over chutes.
We read as
real, I wrote, not lessons.
Most didn’t want to copy us. If we slipped?
Skidded down
a granite
pitch? Then we’d self-arrest
with a hiking pole. If that broke, we’d
use our bones.
Tanya Muzumdar is a writer, editor, and poetry instructor living in northern Michigan. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Nashville Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Gigantic Sequins, Salamander, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Pacific University. Visit her at tanyamuzumdar.com.