Which trees sieved
        twilight
into which cold sink?

 

Crabapple and pines
        or pines
and all the others?

 

The hand: that’s certain.
        And wrath
concealing fear armed

 

by implacable love.
        Bitter
bridle virtue’s scent

 

meant to linger past gag
        and bit—
which word shoved

 

it, fat and anonymous
        ashes—
into my mouth?

 

        Whose name?

 

 

---

 

 

CAROLYN OLIVER is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, forthcoming fall 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize), and three chapbooks. Her poems appear in Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Image, Prelude, Beloit Poetry Journal, Southern Indiana Review, Consequence, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts, where she was a 2023-2024 Artist in Residence at Mount Auburn Cemetery. (Online: carolynoliver.net)

 

The art that appears alongside this piece is by GRANT RAUN.