In the new year, Ohio remains
as uninviting as ever: snow clinging
to our boots, salt speckling the mulch
robin's-egg blue, gray dilapidated barns
flanking one-way roads riddled
with pot-holes, marking the border
between our home and somebody else's.
Cardinals caged in tangled branches, deer
standing rigid on the empty lawn at night.
Rolling fields kiss the edges of town, farmland
lying flat and fallow like the rest of us.
In the slowest of seasons, I'm thankful
for wind clawing at exposed ankles,
for frozen fingers and ears, the geese
forming a perfect V above the church:
all of it. Spring is for fools. Hold on
a few more weeks, and soon we'll walk home
with just enough daylight to see each
other's winter-worn faces in perfect clarity.
Midwestern Reunion by Em Townsend | Poetry Reed Diffuser
$15.00Price
Em Townsend is the author of the chapbooks Astronaut of Loss (Alien Buddha Press, 2025) and growing forwards / growing backwards (Bottlecap Press, 2023). They have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Monarch Queer Literary Awards. Work appears in fifth wheel press, Heavy Feather Review, Gone Lawn, Chestnut Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere.
