Madelyn Garner

And After

Encircled by mist, the sky
is a blurred series of hypotheticals.

Leaves weep their colors.
Cold embraces, chills as it touches.

With each dark omen of crows
another squirrel scampers

along fence line to being a ghost.
Even my empty arms know death

is no more predictable
than when you became ethereal,

nothing left of you to hold
but the weightlessness of ash.

Recent winner of The Western Humanities Review Poetry Prize, and runner-up for the Humboldt Prize, Florida Review, Madelyn Garner’s writing has appeared in The Best American Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, Laurel Review, Sand Hills, Salamander, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Tar River, Pembroke Magazine, The Pinch, and Southern Indiana Review, among others.  She is the co-editor of the poetry anthology, Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined.  Her debut poetry manuscript, Hum of Our Blood, winner of Tupelo/3: A Taos Press July Open, was published in 2017.