The 2River View


30.4 (Summer 2026)

Forrest Rapier

April

I started hiding from the world in the woods with this girl named April. She has the eclipse tattooed on her lower back. Beneath the eclipse is a black tree. She is transforming into moonlight through branches in the dark part of my bed. Rumor has it she is married to a cyclist who is world-ranked for his ability to not chafe. There he goes, pedaling his chopstick-shaped body up the reverse face of a mountain with a pack of obsessive machinists who practice their masochism regularly on carbon-fiber vehicles made for one. There they go, living dudes riding thong-seats into elevation as I slouch on a mid-couch and ponder betting the Underworld. Why am I always chopped? April picks me up from my Bounce House and we clear dead crocuses out from her trunk. We head towards the Gulf and stop at a Shell because she needs me to pump her tank full of Premium. When she leans forward to pop the gas cap beneath her door side, I see the eclipse tattoo again. The nozzle goes into her Prius with a perfect fit. Above the awning, seagulls mock each other for being ugly versions of angels. I am always pumping somebody new full of what they need. More often than not, they need to feel wanted, so I call the Sheriff and put a warrant out for their arrest. At the beach, April wades into the Gulf without me. I am going to get burned.

 

Graveyard

After the Derby Party, we took off our pants

In the Green Hill Cemetery and played

Lasso the moon down from her black ranch.

 

Walking butt-naked through a graveyard

With the Sheriff’s daughter—this ain’t for the haint

Of fart. I am unashamed of my behavior;

 

My name is Forrest Rapier.

I make the switchgrass hitch up

On the back of your neck,

 

I make the dead wake up and walk to Jake’s

So we can shoot pool and eat breakup wings.

Nobody lemons my pepper, mother-trucker.


Forrest Rapier has poems in Best New Poets and Denver Quarterly Review. As the Den Burns was published by Texas Review Press in 2022. An illustrated chapbook, Zeitgeist Cha Cha, is forthcoming with Contagioso Press in August 2026. Rapier is Art Editor for the Southeast Review.