This piece was nominated for The Best of the Net.
Stumbling along
the river’s slick bed
a boy in his sixties
in a wood without time
under a limb-screeded sky
brown-tawned
twined
and tangled down
in depths of timber
autumn blowing a leafy
kiss to
creeping winter.
*
This morning he’d breathed
the death before death
that wakes us
and now, restored
he remembers a joy
in the yester-marrow of his bones:
a sweet danger
peeks
from fathoms of wood
crows on low limbs
caw
in the sneaking loom of dark
secret
tameless
life
teeming:
once more,
his
wild
alone
STEVEN OSTROWSKI is a poet, fiction writer, painter and teacher. His work appears widely in literary journals, magazines and anthologies. He is the recent winner of the 2021 Wolfson Chapbook Prize for his poetry manuscript, Persons of Interest. He’s also the author of five previously published chapbooks–four of poems and one of stories. He and his son Ben are authors of a full-length collaboration called Penultimate Human Constellation, published in 2018 by Tolsun Books. His first novel, The Highway of Spirit and Bone, is forthcoming from Lefora Books. He is a Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University.
MARK ROSALBO is an actor, composer and painter. He grew up in Leeds, Maine, and now lives in Vermont with his wife and five children. He graduated from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles. More of his work can be seen here.
