The bats swept and dove like dark necklaces at the edge of the clearing. Dusk alighted on the forest trees behind the fence and smiled its half smile. Dadin had died.

First, we address those who shift under the surface yet somehow look the same from afar. We do not understand how you are possible, but we honor all kinds of change, including those who camouflage it.

Inside the dead of winter
Curls a fiery soul
A little bear that sleeps defiant
Waiting out the cold.

Perhaps an existential crisis
Shook the universe’s mind,
And sent out blasted aftershocks
To certain human vines--

The shaft of sunlight through the far barn window spun the hay dust into a different kind of gold. The colour lent the old barn a sense of prestige and solemnity, like a king’s robe draped over a farmer—lifting his hollow cheeks, straightening the wrinkles on his brow.  

The house-thief strikes
When I lay the scissors down,
Vanishing them under whatever scarf
Is most forgettable.

The air stagnated in the streets. No, it rotted, like so many leaves in a compost pile. Siran grabbed her oxygen mask off her bedside table and clapped it over her mouth.

The chip salesman lurks in the dark corner of the superstore, handing out three and a half of the Product at a time.

The wolves waited with baited teeth, the leaves dripping onto the forest floor stopped mid-drop, and the little mushroom people called Caps scrunched close and still against the loam. Nothing could move under her shadow, for Bright equaled motion.

You amble outside of your in-laws’ house, the one they’ve had for thirty-four years of married life, the one you’ve driven to approximately 784 times if you count all the late-night stops when you dated your now-husband in high school. The air wavers like a mirage in a desert, and this clues you in that a dream has begun.

When the Thwaites glacier thawed, the news prattled /
about how stock in plastic water bottles fell /

The exterminators wove their bags from the vodka strength of the noonday sun, killing the shadows straight off when they stuffed them in the bags. But Culver wove his bags from the strands of dawn, from when the first few beams trailed across the fields, not too bright, but just bright enough that they couldn’t slip through the stitches.