A Glass Full of Swans

The woman waded through the moonlit fields like a horse – deliberately. Her mouth was a pale line in the darkness, like someone searching for a love lost in death. Her bracelets clinked like hooves to cobble. I watched her move over the field like someone sleepwalking...

Homeward

1. And he said, “There is a reason you stopped drawing trees.” on the same morning that the hand on the clock stopped turning. 2. You spent that morning opening fields – releasing crows in large billows into the sky. There was no one. There was a...

Lower Life Forms

There are men who choose to live without trees. You dreamt that scattered wheelbarrows covered the earth like stones, that flowers broke under the wind that dusted the water. You did not believe that your wife’s shadow looked like a tree against the sun – its wavering...

At Confessions

There comes a time when the trees begin to trade places. A woman spirals through limbs, the nearby depths of a lake – You remember the day when you explained to her how you wanted to wait for a winter wedding – You dug up the charcoal of leftover flowers and leaves,...

Reading/”Favoriting” Zoland Poetry #5

Zoland Poetry 5: An Annual of Poems, Translations & Interviews *** STEPHANIE STRICKLAND burning briar scanning tunnel there is a zombie at the wheel who finds acceptable all risk (his flesh looks like mine) a crinkle monkey in the swamp mind tricky and brisk (his...