Here at Black Lawrence Press we are celebrating National Poetry Month with a poem a day, featuring a total of 30 authors from our list. Today’s featured poet is Brittany Cavallaro, co-author of the chapbook No Girls No Telephones, which is available for pre-order now.
In Us We Trust
Sky clouds at noon, Oconomowoc storms rage
as the land discharges the peaceful
like a jack-knifing car. More, now, more ravines,
more river-basins, at the lowest point
they are on guard. Distrustful underneath
even their stone houses,
those we don’t want. Sundance and pause,
rain and fall, these days we pray
for all to burn out, shine
while they do. Years from now on holiday
the tar pits uneven and insistent
as an attraction.
At this moment, the air breathes them
like lung-coal, and they stand leagues beneath
and they keen. There is no war
and so there are no stars, there is
the reeling notion
that now they are worse than dead.
Brittany Cavallaro is the author of Girl-King, forthcoming from the University of Akron Press in 2015. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, AGNI, Gettysburg Review, and the Best New Poets anthology. She’s the recipient of awards from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. Currently, she’s a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
