Issue > Poetry

Brandon Krieg

Brandon Krieg is the author of Invasives (New Rivers Press), a finalist for the 2015 ASLE Book Award in Environmental Creative Writing. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

A Tall Place, Brief Rain

in the canopy,
my face dry

board-feet
bored feet

the pistillate red, the staminate orange
an unidentifiable feeling
a turtle at the waterline sunning

argosy of gorse
brief as hickories are under geese

undisburdened ferns
confessio nihil

darks alive
a sparking wheel
through the topmost leaves it was
you whet

starlight
down two long antennae
snail

The Fallen Oak's Roots

ripped free round stones
a futile gesture
became the cornerstone

rounded red bricks wash up on the lake's revetments
childhood collapses as
soon as it's rebuilt, childhood lying

in bed by the open
window, smelling the mill-smell like
lilacs dripping semen

so, wander adult
the dye glowing your blood
you seeing you

transparent
as the rim of sky after
sky is not blue