Sarah Seybold
Winter 2026 | Poetry
Burnett Tavern
Spray paint on the singed wall: BARBIE GIVES HEAD.
Though she was nothing like a Barbie, knelt there
in the burnt down Burnett Tavern on Rural Route 53.
Fat. Thin hair. Weeds poking through charred bricks.
Crumbled rocks and splintery wood grinding her
fleshy knees. The harsh sun glared
on that roofless tavern
while each sweaty boy
put himself in her mouth,
same mouth that smiled at me from the stairs to her trailer,
where she sat with her heavy stepdad, his hand on her thigh.
I saw her, waiting to be lifted from that silence.
His bushy black beard swallowing his face.
Sarah Seybold’s poetry and prose have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, ZYZZYVA, The Dodge, LIT Magazine, Arts & Letters, Thimble Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana, and earned her BA in English and Gender Studies from Indiana University and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. She lives with her husband and daughter in Columbus, Ohio.