Anne Barngrover

A soft, confused, hollow rustling fills the air

as a flock of wild turkeys barely rises
before heavily descending, necks bowed,
their wings like intricate blankets.
The sky wears a knotted shawl, rain
loosening in threads. Light drips
from a colander. Today I send messages
and no one responds. A student asks me why
her narrator can’t die at the end of her story,
though I wonder if I don’t drift through
the world that way, a ghost with strained
vocal chords. Spanish moss sways in blue rags.
The grazing cattle appear suddenly
more exotic than before, black as panthers
with ivory horns. Roadside flowers, the dots
of cold butter in something I might bake
and scrutinize. Pen-strokes in the branches.
Not everyone wants an editor. I pass
by the house with a steepled roofline
so sharp-cornered and exacting, you’d have to
stand inside without moving in order to stand at all.

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Anne Barngrover’s third poetry collection, Everwhen, was recently published with University of Akron Press, and her poems and nonfiction have appeared in places such as Verse Daily, AGNI, Guernica, Ecotone and The Slowdown podcast. She’s an Associate Professor of English at Saint Leo University, where she directs their low-residency MA in Creative Writing program and she lives in Tampa, Florida.