Pamela Sumners
I-70 West
On five separate billboards
equitably distributed down I-70
to Jeff City where 163 districts
representing cows bloviate
and 34 senators obfuscate
or pontificate depending on
who is the chaplain for the day:
WHEN YOU DIE
WHAT WILL YOU SAY
AT THE PEARLY GATES
WHEN ST. PETER ASKS
DID YOU DEFEND THE UNBORN?
Two miles later, a billboard
double-decker wants to know:
If you die tonight
Heaven or Hell?
And just beneath,
from Chick-Fil-A,
“Tell Em Tha Cows Sent Ya.”
Pamela Sumners is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Ragpicking Ezekiel’s Bones (UnCollected Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Bacopa Literary Review, Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Eunoia Review, Loch Raven, Mudlark Posters, New Verse News, Shot Glass Journal, Snakeskin, Streetlight Magazine, Ucity Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology The 64 Best Poets of 2018 (Black Mountain Press, 2018), chosen by the editors of The Halcyone literary review. Sumners lives in St. Louis with her family.
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