LUCK

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On one side, the slope of fenced houses, the schoolhouse.
On the other: soy fields. Like a pencil line drawn between,

the dirt road that split my neighborhood from the farmer’s
land, pigsties and cattle, and at the one end the emu pen

with its dirty watercolor smudge of a pond, algae-filmed and stinking
through the car window I leaned against as a boy. I’d scrunch

up my mouth and concentrate as hard as I could, positive
I had the power to make those birds leave their chicken-wire

coops and come charging out to shake their wings in the sun.
But only if I willed it to happen. And each time we passed

and they didn’t appear, later, alone in my bedroom, I’d lie
on the floor looking at the popcorn ceiling and feel sour milk

in my gut because I hadn’t wanted it enough — to watch
them flex and stretch their wings like some dull ache of flight

before their dinosaur eyes fogged over, the notion already forgotten,
back to the loose feed in the dirt. A minivan rolling away.