They Shouldn’t Be
There
Daniel
G. Snethen
We searched for the missing girl
in the remoteness of McNeely Township.
We searched the sun-scorched sandhills
in McNeely Township for the missing girl.
She wasn’t there.
We searched the remoteness
of McNeely Township for the missing girl.
We searched the sub-irrigated meadows,
the old-growth cottonwood copses,
surrounded by the blistering sandhills.
She was there.
She was there beneath a monolithic tree.
She was there and she was dead,
her bones covered by a jet-black mass
of midnight milling flesh-eating spiders,
the size of Kennedy half-dollars
that shouldn’t
be there, but were.
Daniel G. Snethen is a poet residing in South
Dakota. He enjoys reading and writing poems which are dark and bizarre. Snethen's
favorite piece of literature is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
Daniel makes his living by teaching indigenous students on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Snethen holds an M.S. degree in Zoology. Google his name if you are interested in reading
more about him.