Landscape

by Molly Brodak
 

Milk, St. Augustine said

comes not from the cow—

the cow needs, he said,

grass and water—

out of which, he said,

comes milk.

He didn’t understand

matter but

it is true anyway.

And wind works

like beauty works,

not attached

to what it moves,

beyond matter—

no one makes it,

it just sweeps through

a landscape,

a painting of a landscape.

Yellow crescent moon

tipped up like a boat,

a single

radiant planet below.

Grief just sweeps through.

An awareness below,

a composite

awareness attached

to time,

starving, rootless

on purpose,

drawing its likeness.

World War

by Molly Brodak
 

The cold buffets into my coat.

A neutron star is measured in teaspoons.
 

The dark and regular pine grove,

human history,

same ahead, same behind, I don’t know

which direction I’m walking. Fate,
 

monstrous

and empty.

The sun just rolls around the arctic bowl.

A private devotion crystallizes without a target.

A pile of bodies near a well,

for later.

The distance to the future, you could walk there.

This is what I mean by single bind.

The nest is very small but eggs

Molly Brodak is the author of A Little Middle of the Night (University of Iowa Press, 2010) and Bandit: A Daughter’s Memoir (Grove Atlantic, 2016), along with three chapbooks of poetry. She has received fellowships from Emory University and The National Endowment for the Arts.