Rule 3: All Swine, Including the Champions, Must be Slaughtered
Zachary Lundgren


At the Story County Fair, I fell in love
with a girl blonde and sweet
as the cornfields

             and as necessary.

This wasn’t home. I doubt she recognized
the dogwood blooming
out my chest

             but it was – it was descanting the Iowa air.

And no. The fairgrounds are small like this county
but they are not. I watched
him slide a hand down the front of her –

            her jeans, unbuttoned and he wore a hog smile.

The smell of barbecue and cotton candy
compelled the disgust ditching
out my throat, begging for air and more.

             My mouth a hole nothing will fill.

It wasn’t close to harvest so when I ran
into the fields and stripped away an ear
it was just too sweet

About the author:
Zachary Lundgren received his MFA in poetry from the University of South Florida and his BA in English from the University of Colorado at Boulder and grew up in northern Virginia.  He has had poetry published in several literary journals and magazines including The Louisville Review, The Portland Review, Barnstorm Journal, The Adirondack Review, and the University of Colorado Honors Journal.  He was nominated for the 2012 AWP Intro Journals Award and was awarded the Estelle J. Zbar Poetry Prize in 2012.  He is also a poetry editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection and a founding editor of Blacktop Passages.