Burning Orange
Pincushion

Burning Orange

After an hour ride, I made it
to his house. Not sure why
I took a horse. Passed weeping

willows, silver maples with leaves burning
orange. Sun on its way to setting kept the saddle 
warm, turned my hair and horse golden

in its glow.
Seventy degrees and I still had
goose bumps. Wind has so much

more force when I'm trying
to get through it quickly.
Past a gully snaking

through soybeans.
A cornfield disguised
everything but his house's roof and domeless,

moss-covered silo, the mailbox nestled
in wheat-like weeds. A yellow Lab,
head barely above insect-eaten

leaves, bounded through golden
soybeans to greet me. I was
tired, not from the journey, but from letting

my horse take me
to whichever side of the road
he wanted.

He wasn't there.
But the dog looked happy to see me. Didn't even know
who I was.

Pincushion

I'm on the top shelf
tucked in the corner,
too oddly shaped to fit
with spools of thread, miniature
scissors, extra buttons.

Fingers feel me before eyes see
me, a heart cut out of scraps
the color of dried blood, stitched
at the sides,
soft as your old teddy bear, heart
sewed on its white chest.
"I love you" it said until
you pushed it so many times the battery died.

What are you fixing today?
Pull a needle out of me, still strung
with black thread.
Stick the needle back in.
Hold me to sunlight.
See all my holes.

Dawn Schout's poetry has appeared in Breadcrumb Scabs, Down in the Dirt, Fogged Clarity, Foliate Oak Literary Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Midwest Literary Magazine, Muscle & Blood Literary Journal, Poetry Quarterly, The Centrifugal Eye, Tipton Poetry Journal, and over a dozen other publications. She lives near Lake Michigan.