Kenzie Allen


Wisconsin in the Golden Hour

The reeds look like runes, broken mirrors
as light hits the water. I swear I saw
a pair of peacocks nibbling on that nearby
field. Time reframes, the fleeting hysteria,
the momentary black hole zombie apocalypse,
all in a two-mile stretch—see? The fog always fades
in this kind of sun. A fire-loving pine 
spindles into blue as the ash forest nests
around it; we love the singular
pea shoot survival scene, after
the greenhouse goes up in flames.
If I never left my vehicle, was I really here?
For every roadside fence there is still
a red-tailed hawk, far-sighted, mindful
of burrows and tracks, who can see
through the golden fields to that flicker of
iridescence. Anything is possible, now.
We're all just waiting for the sun to crack open.

Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, she has received a 92NY Discovery Prize, the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the Littoral Press Poetry Prize, and the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, as well as fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, the Aspen Writers' Foundation, and Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po). She is a graduate of the English & Creative Writing PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Helen Zell Writers' Program MFA at the University of Michigan. Her work can be found in Poetry Magazine, Boston Review, Narrative Magazine, The Paris Review's The Daily, Best New Poets, and other venues. She is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.

 

ISSN 2472-338X
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