At the Far Edge

by Kathleen McGookey

Once I spread a blue blanket in a field of wild mint, far from the road, where an insect hum rose and filled us, where a crow answered a crow. We were young enough that a parent expected us somewhere later on. The afternoon barely rippled when the crows called through it. We tried looking at the sky, and then you traced a fingertip along my palm. Whatever obligations we had rested on us like wings. I almost don’t want to disturb her, that girl who smells of sunlight and pine, that version of myself who doesn’t know what’s about to happen. Look, she’s brushing a wasp away from her collarbone. Now she’s pulling a leafy twig out of her hair.

Night Has Done Its Part

by Kathleen McGookey

I wake in time to see sparks thrown from the blade as the county plow scrapes by, brief lights inside the soft cold. Like the trail from a lit cigarette tossed from a car ahead. Or how a late jet, approaching the airport low over the lush cornfields in town, stirs up howls from coyotes even after the mechanical rush fades. Crazy, right? But I’ve heard them, in summer, inside my house, inside the night, inside and outside my life. The sound—furious and forlorn—unmoors me. I just remembered this, and now I’m giving it to you.

Kathleen McGookey’s most recent books of prose poems are Nineteen Letters (BatCat Press) and Instructions for My Imposter (Press 53). This year, two more books are forthcoming: Cloud Reports (Celery City Chapbooks) and Paper Sky (Press 53). Her work has appeared in many journals, including Copper Nickel, December Epoch, Field, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Waterwheel Review, and Willow Springs. It has also been featured on American Life in Poetry, Poetry Daily, SWWIM Every Day, and Verse Daily.