The Edge Effect

1 Minute Read Time

Dead-end path through woods
in spring thaw	  prairie grouse stomps 
              & booms on the lek
pinnated subterfuge	  “repairs to a torn fabric” 
draglines & clay tiles in April break
into lonely wild sounds   two orange pockets 
appear & disappear in feathers
on predawn hilltop	  a sun a sail a shoot

“Each life conveys to some certain center” 
she said	  a cracked canoe on the riverbank 
bleak iron-hard & white	    lifeless & unknit 
meadow voles tear up a newly disked field
               with their tiny crooked furrows
if lake torn from rock	if war in warrant
in warbler   in warm & wary	later in summer 
monarchs float above milkweed

Chipping sparrow feeds a fledgling 
throat to throat	  grit-heartbeat
dreaming sometimes of one thing or another 
burned warrior on pavement
                              a grasshopper clicking 
a shovelnose sturgeon making its way 
from the Missouri to the Mississippi 
silt-fast	lock-slow	silver-blue

Tracy Zeman

is the author of Interglacial (Parlor Press 2026) and Empire (Parlor Press 2020). Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, VOLT and other journals, and her essays and book reviews have been published in Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, terrain.org and others. Zeman has earned residencies from the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist Residency, The Wild and Write On Door County. In fall 2022, she spent two weeks as an artist-in-residence in nonfiction on remote Isle Royale, a national park in Lake Superior. And in 2027, she’ll visit the Arctic Circle with 30 other artists and scientists.

She teaches writing at the University of Michigan and literature in U-M’s remote New England Literature Program. Originally from Illinois, Zeman currently lives outside Detroit, Michigan, with her husband, daughter, and dog, where she hikes and bird watches in all seasons.

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