Today, in the sun, my field holds seven different kinds of beige. To
breathe and watch: we have to bear it. The clouds swell–gray and
white and gray. Who’d pick a fight with the trees? With the sky? So
many have fled their windows and can no longer say, That barn is red.
The farmhouse beside it is white. While smoke rises behind them.
KATHLEEN MCGOOKEY’S most recent books are Instructions for My Imposter (Press 53) and Nineteen Letters (BatCat Press). She has also published We’ll See, a book of translations of French poet Georges Godeau’s prose poems. Her work has appeared recently in Columbia Poetry Review, December, Field, Glassworks, Miramar, Quiddity, The Southern Review, and Sweet.