Amy Susan Wilson is the founder and editor-in-chief of Red Dirt Press (www.reddirtpress.net). She is an Oklahoma native and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. A Pushcart nominee, her work has appeared in numerous publications, and she is the author of Fetish and Other Stories (Balkan Books) which was named December 2015 Read of the Month, Southern Literary Review. Her fiction and nonfiction currently chronicle the rural South in the Covid era and the 1980s punk era. (reddirtpressandforum@gmail.com)

The Retarded Boy

lived in a barn

his Daddy a DOC guard

women’s penitentiary.

Like those pictures

of Jews, Auschwitz,

the DHS worker said

when she found him

near-starved

hunkered over

his own skin and bone.

A salt block

for cows

bucket for water

shoved in a 4X4 space

that was caged

as if for chickens

not human boy. Four locks:

two key two combination.

Dark as night all day.

His mama snuck him beets

carrots, Payday candy bars.

II.

When the State came

he learned his name

age fourteen: Cameron.

Elk River Residential Home

tan linoleum floor,

central heat and air

a place where he learns

to eat with a spoon,

always has tube socks

orange Jell-O galore.

Twin bed

white sheets

Lysol-clean,

his Daddy, brother Wilfred

chase him in dreams

lock him back in the barn cage

his mama sneaking

cabbage, M & M’s

green ones.

May 1981

Dwayne Worley

struck by lightening

fishing at Lake Okataloa

in his cousin’s canoe.

His body never found.

Gators dumped

from Lincoln County

when they got too big

for baby pools and bath tubs.

Mrs. Stokely

Okataloa High School

physics, trig and calculus teacher

face frozen in not a frown

nor smile

not mean nor kind

giving out awards

in the new auditorium.

Posthumously

she announced

his name

Best mathematics student,

Young Scientist Award,

scholarship to M.I.T.

Voice cracking

a sniffle

glazed eyes

she called allergies

and apologized

as if the weight

of grief

could cause the dead

to rise.