Issue 24
Spring 2021
Mary Oliver Is Dead
Kristin Fogdall
and I want to know
did she ever watch the gulls at Race Point hang
on nothing but invention,
moving a little up,
a little down,
strung on thread,
and did she ever feel not
the invisible force of poetry or love or being
held in a net of earthly connection,
but instead the vast mathematics
of vacant spaces
hung between even greater
voids—emptiness spread like butter
over this whole enterprise.
Every morning I used to pray
and, no lie, the gaze
of the ocean-maker
was something I felt.
I didn’t turn my back.
If there’s a lamp
moving over my face, I can’t tell.
About the Author
Kristin Fogdall’s poems appear in Slate, The Threepenny Review, Poetry, New England Review, Green Mountains Review, and other venues. She was born and raised in Seattle, WA, and still likes to consider herself a westerner, although she’s lived in the east for years. Kristin earned her MA in creative writing from Boston University, and runs a communications consulting practice for education and nonprofits based in northern Vermont.