Sentients
on the ground
don’t go
We lay body
atop body
aligned and
can’t feel the earth
but for its leaving
Want to hold
a thousand rescues
recluse
we grieve you
trench blue
oxygen is low
and paling
I put two fingers
to the neck
of the pulse
of the creek
and do the names
change
once the water is gone?
Once the falter
was long
and we slammed
our glass
down so quietly
it broke the seasons
This poem first appeared in The Columbia Review (2023).
—
Leah Poole Osowski is the author of hover over her (Kent State University Press, 2016), winner of the Wick Poetry Prize, and Exceeds Us (Saturnalia, 2023), winner of the Alma Award. Her work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Ninth Letter, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She was a former emerging writer in residence at Penn State Altoona and is the advisory poetry editor at Raleigh Review.
