This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Ghost Moose by Margo Taft Stever, released by Kattywompus Press in 2019.
Locked Ward, II
Two Canada geese and three goslings crib grass in a corner patch triangulated by Redcoat Lane, Tower Hill Road, and the reservoir.
The goslings nip green shoots in their narrow constriction, strangulated strip—downy feathers fluttering in summer haze.
The geese hover over them, protecting from menacing cars, blurring by at breakneck speed, drivers cursing out windows—pests, vermin.
They turn their radios up—“Love, O careless Love….” But at dawn, no cars, no noise, all people sleeping, the parents bring
their goslings across the vacant road to teach them how to swim.
In 2019, Margo Taft Stever’s second full-length collection of poetry, Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press), a 2021 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist, and her chapbook, Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press), both appeared. In 2022, her third full-length collection, THE END OF HORSES, will be forthcoming from Broadstone Press. Her four other poetry collections include The Lunatic Ball; The Hudson Line, 2012; Frozen Spring; and Reading the Night Sky. Her poems have appeared widely in literary magazines including Verse Daily, Plume,upstreet, Academy of American Poets, Poem-A-Day Blackbird, Salamander, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Cincinnati Review, Rattapallax, Webster Review, and West Branch. She is the founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the founding and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. In 2021, as Adjunct Assistant Professor, she taught Poetry and Bioethics in the Bioethics Department of the Medical School at Case Western Reserve University. She also teaches poetry at Children’s Village, a residential school for at-risk children.
