Kate Gaskin
Elegy with Citrus Greening and a 100-Year Flood
Whether the trilliums appear
at the foot of March
or the redbuds catch fire
and if the cranes light
in the river or if bees
or whether morels beneath canopies
of hardwoods
or the Gulf licking up
into the hallways of pastel houses.
Even if elderberry
if oranges mottled and hard
in winter or kings
in their migration north
frozen in ryegrass
in the dead end of spring. Even then
even then in beauty
even if gone, if the water rising.
Kate Gaskin is the author of Forever War (YesYes Books 2020), which won the Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Pleiades, The Southern Review, and Blackbird, among others. She is a recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, as well as the winner of The Pinch’s 2017 Literary Award in Poetry. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska and can be found at katebgaskin.com.
Return to March 2019 Edition
Whether the trilliums appear
at the foot of March
or the redbuds catch fire
and if the cranes light
in the river or if bees
or whether morels beneath canopies
of hardwoods
or the Gulf licking up
into the hallways of pastel houses.
Even if elderberry
if oranges mottled and hard
in winter or kings
in their migration north
frozen in ryegrass
in the dead end of spring. Even then
even then in beauty
even if gone, if the water rising.
Kate Gaskin is the author of Forever War (YesYes Books 2020), which won the Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Pleiades, The Southern Review, and Blackbird, among others. She is a recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, as well as the winner of The Pinch’s 2017 Literary Award in Poetry. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska and can be found at katebgaskin.com.
Return to March 2019 Edition