Leah VanSyckel

Flinch finally, the moths have left for the mountains. I watch horses being led from a fire. I feel made of driftwood. bleached and dry and

Mother Goose Revisited At the corner of the bricked-in lane, / she speaks to us through a vine-covered fence / in the vegetation-stripped yard / where

In Case of Drought Call for spring. Conjure winter’s end. Bandage limbs cracked or stunted by wind or worry. Pray for bees, for pollen bodies. Pray

They canceled school due to the treacherous ice and sleet. In the morning, I listened as the flurries and flecks of hail clicked against the windows.

What does it mean to construct digital worlds while the actual world is crumbling before our eyes?                          —Jenny Odell, How To Do Nothing   Walking between

July smothered the city, suffocating the prospect of any outdoor activity conducted between sunrise and sunset. Air conditioners hummed outside apartment windows like swarms of bees.

Christopher rides over on his bike to ask if I want to visit our house before it’s too late, and it might already be. The other

Bismarck, ND I am closing my eyes because the lights have come back on. These blinding glints across the field of my vision, and the dryness

On most mornings in the salt marshes of Hempstead Bay, interlocking islands of emerald grasses flower with life. Egrets inscribe the marshland with white Ss, and

“During weather like this you can hear the corn growing,” Grandma Nila says, her elbow resting on the open window as she drives past cornfields rippling