Brooks Balkan, 2022 Original Poetry Winner

Their Pumpjack

Frothing water churned
in the burbling nooks of streams.
Spindly trees
twisted
through the sky
to our sunlight.

We watched them come.
We watched,
sitting
in the gentle fingers of the trees.

Crawling fields of
our mothers
molted,
shedding their skins
and becoming
slithering deserts.

Our shimmering trees
closed
their fingers
into fists,
withered,
and burned.

Frothing black liquid
pounds up from the nooks
of the depths
of our earth,
spitting into
our sunlight.

The eternal
up-down
of the pumpjack
forever
hammers
the war drum,
reverberating from our heart,
driving its spear
into