Kirstin Allio

EVENSONG

Sunless sunset,
without chariot.
Sunkdown grounds
truck sheltering into a mean
old machine
shed, pine dunes,
mist sits
in sand pits
in the debunked golf course.
Is the brain benign?

At times like this
I love life
and so I do not meditate,
which is arguably the new golf,
although my path
is potted with doubt

and so I don’t sleep
where rocks grow
in the shade.

The wind hustles
a double birch
like a reckless driver
loose in the dark woods.

KIRSTIN ALLIO is the author of the short-story collection Clothed, Female Figure (Dzanc) and the novel Garner (Coffee House), a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Her new novel, Buddhism for Western Children, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press. Her poems appeared recently in Fence, Prairie Schooner, and Web Conjunctions.