Gennarose Nethercott
author of a narrative poem, a book of poetry, and an art book; winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series Competition, selected by Louise Gluck; her work has appeared in BOMB Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, The Offing, PANK, and elsewhere; founder of the Traveling Poetry Emporium, a team of poets-for-hire
Lumberjack starts his pickup truck. He keeps the windows closed as he drives & the dove floats up to bounce against the glass. The road is slick with rain. Worms boil up from the earth. Now there is a shirt tied around the wound, the fabric growing sticky & dark with ache. A bootlace becomes a tourniquet. A terrible yank settles in the basement of his heart, the lowest stair.
Some men have a gift for controlling which way a tree will fall. They spit snuff into undergrowth to interpret like tea leaves. They light brushfires just to speak to the smoke. When a trunk drops, it could almost be mistaken for bowing.
When Axe & Lumberjack touch, whole forests die for them.
from The Lumberjack’s Dove: A Poem by Gennarose Nethercott (Ecco/HarperCollins)
