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Published: Mon Oct 15 2018
Eva Lundsager, Were now like (detail), 2021, oil on canvas
AGNI 88 Loss Nature Relationships
Letter to Lost City

Rainsound on that roof
patterned me like a loved voice.
Now every rain takes me
back to the creek swifting down
from the mansion of the newspaper magnate
over golden alder leaves,
proving we can still have something
there is no science of—
a used volume flipped through
at the block-large bookstore, and more, even,
than the translated lovers’ grief
at parting, this recipe for
“Wobbly Friendship Bread”
scribbled in the flyleaf.
I copy it for you, friend,
remembering that day lobbing rocks
from the cliff into the sea, musing
we could be in a lost absurdist play
by Aeschylus or Euripides.
Were there such plays?
Were there such blackberries
lining our paths through shore pines
and the scent of burning sand
from the driftwood in the cookstove?
I keep re-steeping the oolong we boiled
on the stove’s iron plate, so long after
it tastes only like the water
of this other city far away.

See what's inside AGNI 88
Poetry
Looking for Arrowheads
AGNI 91 Loss Nature Relationships
Poetry
Swan Song
AGNI 60 Loss Nature Relationships
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Inside the Wind
AGNI 4 Relationships Nature Loss

Brandon Krieg is the author of two poetry collections, In the Gorge (Codhill Press, 2017) and Invasives (New Rivers Press, 2014). He lives in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Kutztown University. (updated 10/2018)

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