Unmapped
The robin skitters across the mulch you laid
and now you wonder if the clutch of dead leaves
that you yanked out of the arborvitae was
a nest, and you hope instead she’s just looking
for worms in the turned-over earth. And
again you’re thinking again about that spider,
years ago, that clung to your driver’s side mirror
all the way down I-93 until it dropped
into traffic in the middle of Mystic Ave,
miles from anywhere like home. You know
what it is to wake up one morning in a life
you don’t recognize. What it is to be on the far side
of the moment—the accident, the diagnosis,
the breakup—that closes off one future
forever. What it is to see your past still there,
shining and intact. No way back.
–
–
–K.T. Landon is the author of Orange, Dreaming (Five Oaks Press, 2017). She was a finalist in Narrative’s Ninth Annual Poetry Contest and her work has appeared in Passages North, Tinderbox Poetry Review, and Best New Poets 2017. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology, and she serves as a senior poetry reader for Muzzle.
Incessant Pipe 