by Han VanderHart
Or cloudy. Partial sun. Pressure
dropping or steady. Children
at school. Guns sold
over the counter. Boxes of
bullets. You come
out of nowhere. Siren-eerie.
Call to my bones. Surprise
like an air raid, or lightning
touching a person
through an open window—
my neighbor’s grandmother.
A headline-worthy
thunderstorm.
The loudest sound
I’d ever heard: sonic boom.
My neighbor slamming
her windows closed
in the middle of the night
worried the poplar
tree had been struck.
In the damp morning: no marks
anywhere. Out-of-time.
I should have met
you years ago.
Your eyes
the spring blue
of a thawed lake.
A several acre pond
of tenderness.
Lines that run deep.
I am running
towards you this
morning.
For the space of
this poem, I have only
thought of you
and several disasters.
Shades of blue. A sound
from the distance.
::
Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Their manuscript Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025) won the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, judged by Chanda Feldman. Han is also the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021). They have poetry and essays published in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and co-edits the poetry press River River Books.
Image: set. sj
ID: white cloud against a blue sky.
Psaltery & Lyre 