an extinction

                                               extra as nouns’ dramas that unfold

                   a sambal of shadows flavors a gallows’ human haul

                                what word’s yours?

say that                  allow two sorrowful protons a solo pronoun

              a porous room won’t hoard                        hands out drafts (not

draft as war’s favor        but draft as door’s sap)                 not to patrol as a puma 

                                                         fallow marsh                      arduous growth

pay to pass glass that guards an ossuary that guards a body’s flotsam

                              what for mastodons? shoot as many 

photographs as shot of Portugal’s famous tram                              to that way hold

Cover Art: Always This Moment, by Edward Lee

Kristi Maxwell

Kristi Maxwell’s seventh book of poetry, My My, came out with Saturnalia Books in 2020. Her work has been the editor’s choice selection for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize (Realm Sixty-four, Ahsahta Press) and the Saturnalia Poetry Prize (Hush Sessions, Saturnalia). She is a 2022-23 American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellow and Associate Professor of English at the University of Louisville.

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