Jolene is an M.F.A. creative writing graduate student at University of Montana where she teaches first-year composition and serves as poetry editor for the literary magazines Cutbank and Camas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Carolina Quarterly, Postroad, Belleville Park Pages, and elsewhere. Her Red Bird chapbook won the 2015 Merriam-Frontier Award.
From Peregrine
Crossing The Anthropocene
Every glacier
is a comma
falling out of place.
We rush in to fix the footnotes.
Meanwhile
the open country
is leaving.
I feel the weight
of another earth shrinking.
I’ve read predictions
preparing maps
for my generation
on a capsized continent
surrounded
by floodplains.
In Beijing
they’re searching
for fresh lettuce.
In another life we were rural
and our kin carried great forests
down to the river.
For kindling.
For bridges.
For rituals to bring rain.
In Minneapolis
a dozen bee colonies
collapse overnight.
An indifferent sip, a poisoned bud, a pistil.
