New Year’s Eve,
Zoe Boyer
fire lit in the stove’s iron belly, a warm glow
that might be mistaken for cheer, but if I could
tear each page from the calendar, I would,
feed them to the ravenous tongues of flame—
nothing so daunting as a future yoked
to the heft of history, hauling its
tonnage into January’s fresh snow.
Burn the annals, burn the words I wrote
thinking language was a spell to banish
grief—no poem’s as sweet as forgetting.
I want the year’s record emended, every fraught
memory redacted until only the field notes remain:
November 3rd, unseasonably warm, sky the still
silver of a windless lake, cardinals out to feast,
wings red as the fruited crowns of hawthorns.
And if I wept that day in the dark cavern
of my bedroom for a fear that pierced
my heart like a beak through the ripest berry,
I do not recall and the record makes no note.
that might be mistaken for cheer, but if I could
tear each page from the calendar, I would,
feed them to the ravenous tongues of flame—
nothing so daunting as a future yoked
to the heft of history, hauling its
tonnage into January’s fresh snow.
Burn the annals, burn the words I wrote
thinking language was a spell to banish
grief—no poem’s as sweet as forgetting.
I want the year’s record emended, every fraught
memory redacted until only the field notes remain:
November 3rd, unseasonably warm, sky the still
silver of a windless lake, cardinals out to feast,
wings red as the fruited crowns of hawthorns.
And if I wept that day in the dark cavern
of my bedroom for a fear that pierced
my heart like a beak through the ripest berry,
I do not recall and the record makes no note.
Zoe Boyer was raised in Evanston, Illinois on the shore of Lake Michigan, and completed her MA in creative writing among the ponderosa pines in Prescott, Arizona. Her work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Hopper, Poetry South, Kelp Journal, Plainsongs, About Place, and West Trade Review, and has been nominated for Best of the Net.
© Variant Literature Inc 2023