A trail of snapped things,
thickets nipped
thoughtfully.
A cold sashay.
Someone wore soup pots
as snowshoes
and postholed
the blue snow,
each print its own
thought; something
that big did not need
to hurry. Where
are you, yellow incisors,
petroleum gaze,
octopus lips? Horsehair
couch with chorus-girl knees?
Rack of spreading cartilage?
Gone, leaving only these
cold wells of hunger
across the nothing of winter.
James Armstrong is the author of two poetry books, Monument in a Summer Hat (New Issues Press 1999) and Blue Lash (Milkweed Editions 2006), and is the co-author of a book of essays, Nature, Culture and Two Friends Talking (North Star Press 2015). He is currently at work on a critical study of the poet William Stafford. Armstrong is a recipient of the PEN-New England Discovery Prize, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in poetry. He is a Professor of English at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota. He posts essays and drawings at https://thinearth.blog.
