Poetry
From Issue III (2018)Succession
by JESS WILLIARD
What they must have thought, pulling twine-rigged rafts
to the riverbank and cresting the scree
deposit cliff to an ensemble
of gopher frogs in the dark. How each unseen
thing was huge that night, even with
the specter of doubt casing their movement.
The weeks away from land folded
each moment back before letting it
become another, and the season
was balled up immediately after
it was read. It could have been shame they felt
those first overcast mornings, towing nets for fish
they weren’t sure were there. Or maybe just after
deciding they were alone, they forgot
how hard it all was. But they get there in the dark.
That’s what happens. They grope through a land
not theirs, and dawn ignites like a pilot light.
Elephant, W. 33rd Street | LAUREN GRABELLE
Archival inkjet print, 12 x 18 in., early 1990s
Succession
by JESS WILLIARD
Across the stippled center line
rushes a column of traffic in the same
direction. We streamline each other,
waked in parted air and hurried—
offered, rather—to parallel inertias.
This is moving. I stop at a truck weigh
station at dawn to watch a pair of turkeys
saunter through the misted lot. They are tall
and shimmer as they walk, and I want
to reach out and offer them the mill
of my hand, a rudder through and away
from this place. Take it. They disperse
and I go. This is moving. Gentle hills
tease and part the rows of corn to disclose
dirt scalps. The books in the bed of the truck
are puffy from rain. They’re going home.
When I get there it won’t be
the place I’ve imagined, but it’s important
to know that when I start unloading
milk crates of books onto the driveway
my mom will put out a hand. Take them,
she’ll say. They’re yours now.
Jess Williard
Jess Williard’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Third Coast, North American Review, Colorado Review, Southern Humanities Review, Barrow Street, Lake Effect, New Orleans Review, Sycamore Review, Bayou Magazine, Iron Horse Literary Review, and The McNeese Review. He is from Wisconsin. His website is jesswilliard.com.
Lauren Grabelle
Lauren Grabelle’s photography falls in the matrix where fine art and documentary meet, where she can tell truths about our relationships to other people, animals, nature, and ourselves. Her work has been exhibited in galleries in London, New York City, Italy, and Montana, among other places, and has been published in The New York Times, Harper’s, and Virginia Quarterly Review.