Issue > Poetry

Alec Hershman

Alec Hershman lives in St. Louis where he teaches at Stevens-The Institute of Business and Art. He has received awards from the Kimmel-Harding-Nelson Center for the Arts, The Jentel Foundation, Ananda College, and The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design. More of his work is soon to appear in The American Poetry Journal, Parcel, Tule Review, Permafrost, and Puerto del Sol.

A Place In My Heart With Birds, Amerced

Having been made to look
at the bell, having been made

to crawl around the table
on all fours, similarities cast

their muzzy holographs
into the eyes of the looker,

who at times, looked like I did
and at times, looked at finches

sprung on shocks of millet
in a snow-muted country

he alone could see. Intimacy
was something like a pond,

on the opposite sides of which
stood two lovers. The distance

across it was short, compared
to a lake, or to an ocean—

and shorter, still, when frozen.