​Crooked shack on a snowy plain near mountains, by Ann Garwig

Snow, by John Twatchtman (USA). 1895-1896.

​Crooked shack on a snowy plain near mountains
 
More of the same fields rise
when driving past. I skim
the ancient junk piles,
measures of time and waste from
the rural professor,
the ubiquitous poverty
of ideas about how to clean this
abandonment and romance.
Romance is not actually
here or anywhere.
A repose inside the lack of touch,
the lack of poet body
like a house slowly eroding into the ground,
presently unknowable.
Put two hands on the steering wheel
at whatever time seems to offer
the most control. Get to work
on time.

Anne Garwig

Anne Garwig’s poetry has appeared in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Broad!, and the Jenny, among other journals and anthologies. Anne completed the 2017 Poetry Foundation Summer Poetry Teachers Institute in Chicago and teaches in the English department at Kent State University in Salem, Ohio. She lives in Youngstown, Ohio.