Issue > Poetry
Stephen Knauth

Stephen Knauth

Stephen Knauth is the author of The River I Know You By and Twenty Shadows, both from Four Way Books, and several other collections of poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in North American Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily, FIELD, Poetry International, and Washington Square. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council.

 

Rest Stop


Driving all night alone
then to look in the mirror
and see the others, washing their hands.
Low sky pulled over like a sheet.
Little bowlegged dogs.  
Cheese crackers land with a lonesome
thud on the vending machine floor.
Tips of the sword leaf palmetto
say move along, tiny lamps
in the hind brain burning.

Atlantic Elegy

Lately her love's so
slender, width
of an atom,

but long and circling            
back, spiraling, a net
you might pass right through

or just as well be
snagged on invisible lines.
Then you can only wait.

She will come to you
with last night's muted sunset
printed on the inner scrolls of her shell,

a smooth and pale communion
you were born to take,
host of salt and fire and death.

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Heather Altfeld

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Susan Musgrave

Susan Musgrave
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Stephen Harvey

Stephen Harvey
Waiting Room