The Owls Come Calling

1.

A black grip, and absence watches.
Days convene their small red hatchmarks on the wall.
We wait in the wings of the city
for the act to unwrap itself.
Trees prepare their branches.

Time passes and yet.
Geese scissor their way across the sky, wedge after wedge.
The parking lot is a sea of metal where
people line up for “world-famous ice cream.”
The sky has a mean look.

2.

It isn’t the first time we’ve slipped back—
sticking to the edges of the streetpooled light.
We seek a Morse code for our afflictions,
though gestures, it’s true, are never enough.
Some have the luck of being in the wrong place
at the wrong time. Others, like me, carry

a vague fog of disinformation into a room.
What were you saying again? Have we met before?
Declare your intent and your fruit at the border.
A sound like the striking of a match.
The sound of laundry snapping in a wind.
Behind: a line waiting. Before you: hills.

3.

Let’s face it: the river, that is. And our lady who stands
atop the bluff. The sunset cut
from its moorings, colors sneaking off
before we can stop them.
There’s no harm in a promenade this time of night
when people head west with their dogs.

It’s not the worst of all possible worlds.
The moon’s fingernail scrapes its way
across the chalkboard, scripting sleep, footsteps, etc.
Behind you: waiting. Before: the night’s slim hitch.

4.

Don’t leave us, someone says in the salt cave
of the hall. The night’s breath
moves desire down your spine. You’re sick with it.
It’s getting almost time for the rivulets to come
knocking, to muster a force that can take

the ice under, knuckle aside the crust of leaves that clogs
the entrances and exits.
Light shoves aside the curtain. The bed

is a sickroom, walls dizzy gray
in the pallid afternoon. Ice cracks; the lake
once again shows its face. Last night the dog
crossed the street again: a black dog. Need you ask?

J. L. Conrad is the author of the full-length poetry collection A Cartography of Birds (Louisiana State University Press) and the chapbooks Recovery (Texas Review Press, winner of the 2022 Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize), and Not If But When (Salt Hill, winner of the third annual Dead Lake Chapbook Competition). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Jellyfish, Sugar House Review, Salamander, Moon City Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Published January 15 2023