By Whitney Schmidt

a “golden shovel” poem in the style of Terrance Hayes
after William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow”

We are free now, newly hatched adults ditching class—so
full of adventure and caffeine we don’t tell anyone, don’t plan much
just light out south from Columbia on Highway 63. So much depends
upon miles per gallon upon map skills upon chance upon

how long it takes till the cash runs out. You pass me a Coke, sling me a
map of Missouri and Oklahoma — the Tulsa dot a bullseye circled in red
a warning, an incorrect answer. I grip the map as you turn the wheel
and I wish us anywhere but Tulsa slouching in dusk like an ancient barrow

mound of earth over my old life. Still, I sing along, the windows now glazed
with rain water now with icy streaks now with sleet like bullets now with
wet clumps of fluff. We do not hesitate. So what if it’s no longer rain?
So what if we slide? Snow drifts ripple dark pavement like cresting water

and we glide along as if sailing. We speed on, draw up beside
a hulking semi-truck stacked with metal cages obscure in the hazy fog the
steely mist. Volume up! Windows down! We do not slow when the white
turns from flakes to feathers to frozen wings. We pass them going 80. Chickens.

About the Author

Whitney Schmidt (she/her) is a teacher and amateur lepidopterist with a passion for poetry and pollinators. She founded the first student-led secondary school Writing Center in Oklahoma and co-sponsors an LGBTQIA+ affinity group. Her work has been published in Harbinger and So to Speak. She lives near Tulsa, Oklahoma with her partner, two pit-mix dogs, and various moth and butterfly guests.