The Glacier
Issue One
Fall 2022

The Goring

You are given a cross as seagulls scream.
You are watched from a marigold covered window     moonbeam over your back.
You are trying to find something you’ve lost     something carved out of 

you     dropped somewhere to dissolve.
You are dissolving.
You are mist     unmissed.  Dropped down     down.

You want to tear away the marigolds say     See me here.  I am here.  Here.
You detest the moon despite how she makes you glow.
You wonder about the watcher     the known     unknown.

You hold the cross with both palms     press it to your chest.
You have given too much     too much of you gone.
You have lost.

Metamorphic Rock

The streaks that heat made     pressure.
Beneath the ground until exposed 
to water     air     our assiduous feet.
We don’t want to slip     crash into what
has been crashing for millions of years.
I watch a family of guillemots float
on dazzling crests.  I will not 
look at you.  Preferring the sunset     the empty
houses that seem to melt. However 
you are in the sunset.  The one I see     know.
You are probably looking at me.  
Waiting for me to turn.  To reassure 
we are good     you are?  No.  You
have caused what is excruciating.

Sundown

A burning sky     a flock of cardinals

             burning to be reborn.  This is sacrifice.

Red barns burn in a sundown town.

             Red summer burned blacks.

Tulsa was burned black 

             for being in the black.

Such red dreams     a flock of cardinals

             burning to be reborn     elsewhere.

Perhaps in a red maple wood

             on a continent’s edge     burning.

Angela Davis Lewiston 1991

This is what we say in churches.

This is what we say in three-piece suits.

This is what we say in this war     that war     them all.

This is what we say with green hair.

This is what we say here.

This is what we say in buses.

This is what we say in the Middle East.  

This is what we say to alienation. 

This is what we say in loud voices.

This is what we say at home.

This is what we say to bombs.

This is what we say to black people bombed.

This is what we say to autonomy.  

This is what we say to connection.

This is what we say to everybody    everybody     everybody.

This is what we say to confusion.  

This is what we say to fight the wronging power.

This is what we say     say     say     say.

MYRONN HARDY is the author of, most recently, Radioactive Starlings. His poems have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, POETRY, The Georgia Review, The Baffler, and elsewhere. He lives in Maine.

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