Maybe the Body

Asa Drake

(Tin House)

“Cottonmouth sunning on a pine berm
after a loud shake in the leaves,
by shake I mean earth-shaking. Green
lizard after green lizard emptying
out of the forebay. I send a snapshot
to a friend who says, Yes, that’s a thick
snake. I want to see more. The world
isn’t miserably sad here. I expand
and live in the warm days. . . .”

Singing Under Snow

Anne Haven McDonnell

(Wheelbarrow Books)

“. . . . I always
feel the way my own fuzzy
ancestry, my breezy
white walking, leaves me
lonely. Like lichen,
I is really we,
and there are so many
gone from me.”

Horses 

Jake Skeets

(Milkweed Editions)

“. . . it will be winter in now time

somewhere in a dune field

I am hunched over like a comma

stuffing the way a landfill

can be mistaken for sky”

Natural History

Brandon Kilbourne

(Graywolf Press)

“All my daring to dull haunting sapphire,
old seines ensnaring through your ripping blue.”

Seacliff

Cate Lycurgus

(Bull City Press)

“. . . . Cirrus
like bones of a prehistoric fish score

the sky opposite–before sun unrolls
its carpet of shine, the gleam is hundreds

of camera flashes capturing retreat–
like paparazzi, I know who to watch . . .”

Distant Water

Beth Piatote

(Milkweed Editions)

“. . . I remember you,
/////////////// then I must stop
remembering
/////////////// and cut off my hands again, and flatten the tires,
and give back the key. . .”

The Fire Passage

Lisa Wells

(Four Way Books)

“Please permit no more
fear into my temple.

I should have been a better friend to myself.”

Atria

D.S. Waldman

(Liveright)

“. . . . Poppies everywhere in Adams Point. Silk teacups in the yard,
citrus orange. Little spills across the median on MacArthur.

I call them feminine; G calls me basic.”

Is Is Enough

Lauren Camp

(Texas Review Press)

“. . . . Some would say

we were not divine between us but we hummed our shared holy
family in a quarry of folding chairs.”

I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little

Krissy Klundt

(Green Writers Press)

“an oak
cannot exist
without a star”

SOFAR

Elizabeth Bradfield

(Persea Books)

“. . . . But what if

this gift has no sorrow wrapping it? What then do we know
of the world? I’ve been faithful to you for twenty-five

years and now my body’s becoming a new weather.
It was winter and summer at once.  We were old

and strange to each other at once.  I’m not sure
how to see anything clearly at all.”

Startlement: New and Selected Poems

Ada Limón

(Milkweed Editions)

“Sometimes someone sees
a loneliness in me, but what

////////////it is a need to be alone, out
there—out there falling in gray air.

The clouds aren’t clean, covering
////////////for smoke, yet we point to clouds
as if it is our job. Oh god,

what if all I’ve done is guard
myself against despair?”