51·çÁ÷¹ÙÍø

You can’t just go around

by Brandon Krieg

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inventing holidays
                blessed malingerer,
                      you can’t just do
         what the universe
               relaxes into doing through you
easy as loose ends
                 of a wind-shredded
     flag rise and fall
               like a sleeping child’s small ribs

You can’t just have a son,
              a single oak
   the lines of your life
 plow
        widening rings around
so sunflowers might embody
                       far-reaching
 energies unsymbolic

to bees,
       You can’t just be like a bee
pocketed in gold and gold
          deposited in its pockets,
mini-billionaire, whose murmurs on blurry-warm nights
          will sometimes have just gone quiet
You can’t just not know why

you took the dark road to flash with headlights
          a crossing coyote’s eye,
              signaling to satellites
    to cease their ceaseless transmissions,
plummet, a thousand undetected Icaruses
    into remote seas, sink and transform into

                       barnacled altars to
the side-eyed indifference
      of flounders, skates, and rays:
that unconcern, you can’t
          just inhabit that
like a frog so deep in its body
when it blinks the wet corners
                of its eyes show it
coated in dust from the road.

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51·çÁ÷¹ÙÍø the Author

Brandon Krieg's most recent collection is Magnifier (Center for Literary Publishing, 2019) , winner of the 2019 Colorado Prize for Poetry chosen by Kazim Ali and a finalist for the 2022 ASLE Book Award in Environmental Creative Writing. He lives in Kutztown, PA, and teaches at Kutztown University.