Todd Boss's first full-length poetry collection, Yellowrocket, is forthcoming this November from W. W. Norton. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Missouri Review, New England Review, Poetry, and other publications. He is the director of External Affairs at The Playwright's Center in Minneapolis and lives in St. Paul with his wife and two children.
Also By This Author
Ruin
was rumored
to be rooming
up the road
where
a neighbor’s barn’d
burned down.
Their heyday
a payday
away,
Pride,
Ruin’s bride-to-be,
paced our property
in the long
laced gowns
of afternoons,
while Ruin
rode shotgun
in Dad’s old Ford
and pulled the wheel
hard toward
cabarets.
Dad had
work, but
Ruin had ways.
Virginia Quarterly Review
