The field is pocked  with flame and char
and the lake   a flooded socket deep in its middle. 

I crouch in the cross-ditch.    Also burning?

No. I watch the little fires. Beacons  outlining the lakebody.
Smoke clings to the hot pool of its fever-face.

There should be a barn here somewhere    a boat and a willow by the water
at least one flock of sheep.             No return no wingbeat

And there the spot where     I know you’ll reappear.        Are you falling?

No, I’m rising. The smoke in swollen confusion
swarms over the waterbody.   They say to be warm is to be alive

There a figure emerging from the tree line.            Not me

See how his boots season the dirt with lye and lavender how he slips

into the dead eye of the lake into the calm
of a body released        back to the captor.     

 The sheep hammer in my skull. Also burning.

Published August 1st, 2021

Jan Verberkmoes is a poet and editor from Oregon. She received her MFA from the University of Mississippi, where she was a John and Renée Grisham Fellow. Her poems have recently appeared in the Paris Review, Lana Turner, and Denver Quarterly, among others. A recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a 2018-19 Stadler Fellowship at Bucknell University, and a 2019-20 Fulbright Fellowship to Germany, she now lives in Colorado where she is pursuing her PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver. Her first collection, Firewatch, is forthcoming from Fonograf Editions in fall 2021.

Mamma Andersson is an artist based in Stockholm, born in Luleå, Sweden. From 1986 to 1993, Andersson trained at Kungliga Konsthögskolan (The Royal Institute of Art) in Stockholm. In addition to numerous group exhibitions, Andersson has had solo exhibitions at Galleri Magnus Karlsson in Stockholm, Galleri 1 in Gothenburg, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, David Zwirner in New York City, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and Aspen Art Museum, among many others. Her work is also part of public collections in Sweden, Norway, and the United States, including Malmö Konstmuseum, Moderna Museet, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Dallas Museum of Art, and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. More of her work can be viewed online through Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stephen Friedman Gallery, and David Zwirner.