The World Is Too Much With Us
by Jane Zwart
And now for the metaphors that are not balm. Now
the winter of a single blizzard, of drought, of hogbacks
plowed across Lowes’ huge lot: a bleached reef,
says my son. Now, moored to locusts, a sling, a woman
sleeping rough: low-hanging fruit. Now metastasis:
milk thistle. Now the hospice of bees and frogs.
Once things took generations; it took seven, for instance,
for toymakers to rule guillotines fair game. Now, though--
now a stick is a Ruger the second some kid picks it up.
the winter of a single blizzard, of drought, of hogbacks
plowed across Lowes’ huge lot: a bleached reef,
says my son. Now, moored to locusts, a sling, a woman
sleeping rough: low-hanging fruit. Now metastasis:
milk thistle. Now the hospice of bees and frogs.
Once things took generations; it took seven, for instance,
for toymakers to rule guillotines fair game. Now, though--
now a stick is a Ruger the second some kid picks it up.
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, as well as other journals and magazines. In addition, she is the co-editor of book reviews for Plume; her own reviews have been published there as well as in The Los Angeles Review of Books.