James Galvin is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Everything We Always Knew Was True and As Is, as well as the acclaimed prose meditation The Meadow and a novel, Fencing the Sky. Galvin lives in Laramie, Wyoming, where he works as a rancher, and in Iowa City, where he is a faculty member of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Photograph by Kirk S. Murray.

Bad Samaritans

by James Galvin

Most Samaritans, of course, are Bad,
Otherwise there wouldn’t be a story
Or way to explain the alarm the Man-Fallen-
Among-Thieves expresses on being offered
An unknown, viscous, bitter panacea,
Or why the Samaritan himself recoils

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