A heat slips its hands across my face  one over my mouth
one over my eyes tells me

there is an ash I cannot see
that covers the hills and field  that does not speak or move—

soundless     can you hear it lowing?

Across the lake     the houses have no roofs
and the glass-shattered water clicks and blinks in the sun.

The heat sticks sweetly in my eyes and hair and this looks all wrong:

you used up bird in the thistle
that’s not song you’re throwing but sand.

Soldier where  is your gun?

I pick you    up  I put you down.

A thirst-grated throat   a fistful of grass—any tool in the   hand is a weapon.

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.