Tyler Allen Penny
​Image by Anna Essentiels on Unsplash                                                                                       
Tyler Allen Penny is a queer poet, performer, and educator from a one stoplight town in the pine belt of Mississippi. His poems can be found in Crazyhorse, Best New Poets 2018, Columbia Journal, The Southampton Review, Deep South Magazine, OF ZOOS, Fearsome Critters: A Millennial Arts Journal, and elsewhere. His work has also been included in Entropy Magazine’s Best of 2020-2021: Favorite Poems Published Online. He is the recipient of the Joseph Kelly Prize and scholarships to attend Tin House's Winter Workshop, Taleamor Park and the Vermont Studio Center. In 2017, He received his M.F.A. from Stony Brook Southampton. He lives and teaches in Brooklyn, NY.
Small Town Mythology


                           Rust red burst forth through white paint 
fissures like gashes                                             
                                        across your mother’s iron-boned 
                                        garden bench. We lounged around 
kissing each other on the mouth in search of things less practical 
but beautiful like burning pine needle voodoo dolls 
                                                     with stolen Bic lighters 
and pricking fingers on spiny 
                                                                   sweet-gum wrecking balls. 
We kings of pearled magnolia bade with bamboo flutes 
               each morning’s dew to bloom           our kudzu kingdom. 
                                                                               Between the slick 
of hurricanes, evening honey suckle lightly 
soured the dreamy haze of sweat-stained streets. We danced 
              the muddy swamp blues till our eyes 
              glared like gator jewels, then raced 
barefoot back down the black tar highway 
that coiled slowly around 
                                                       the scorned backside of our town. 
The grim moon grinning through       boughs of dead pecan, 
urging us back home with                                   go on, go on.






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