The Glacier
Issue Three
Winter 2024

Rabbit

As a sung lyric melismas 
one sound into the next just so 
the first writing blurred in the yard
a half-eaten rabbit visible spine 
skin-shorn leg a kind of divination
a paleography unfolding from 
indiscernible symbols the lake 
the late night questions unripe 
as half-moon stone fruits 
of midsummer the coiled 
comfort of another despite 
the grotesque times bleak year 
of cruelty I was glad to live 
even in your troubled company
I should have persisted with 
the rabbit bones instead you 
read my cards you drew the sun 
became enraged I never wanted 
what you thought I did it’s hard 
to understand another person 
in a plague looking back I interpret 
the bones differently now they tell 
the wild fear of a creature 
desperate to survive

On the Saguenay River

Halfway through the morning’s coffee 
and no closer to solving the world’s 
problems. The sky ombrés
azure into alice against 
the deep-pine vertical of mountain 
across the river. There is so little 
I can hope for in the unnumbered days 
that remain. Still, I hope assiduously,
like a pilgrim miles on the way. 
The ships bob in the river
with the placid gulls. How steady 
it must be to float serene here, 
green on all sides, hunted neither 
by the past nor what follows. If I look 
long enough into the current, 
I almost forget how afraid I am. How 
dire the days pull. Sometimes, I do 
forget. And for a moment, nothing 
needs to be done. That is the trap. 
That is the release. The ease of oblivion, 
a chicxulub cratering of the self. 
What am I without my grief, 
my agitation and want for change.
What am I with it, inconsequential
as I am. The birds take flight 
and are replaced by birds, the coffee 
runs out, ships move on and become 
new ships. Up the long winding hill 
in the park with the electrical tower 
and its wires there is a wooden platform 
overlooking the wide blue river 
and far below, a vertiginous distance, 
boats look like toys to their tasks, running 
to and fro and maybe I should be 
living other lives more enlightened 
more cohesive but I don’t actually
give a damn about shrines, I’m just
walking and each step means nothing
and each step is everything I have.

Interview with beach glass and bear

Am I happier, there? The boyish grin
of someone who grew up as real 
as shattered glass after the bear escapes. 
It’s been so long, so many rains. 
The river’s different now, diverted. 
A shard in the palm, sharp became 
beach stone, became sediment. 
Weather is not the only way to change 
the course of water. A river is forced
underground or dammed to stagnancy.  
A bed dries up or overflows, or does
both in unequal, wavering measure. 
A bear makes its way to the tidal mouth. 
A boy kisses the ocean. A river becomes 
sea, churning, salt and fresh and sand. 
I’m holding a half-smoothed bead,
standing murky at the interflow.

Kate Pyontek lives and works in Cambridge, MA. Their poetry is published or forthcoming in Poetry, Ecotone, Southeast Review, Consequence, Shō Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, the lickety~split, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere. Kate is online at katepyontek.com

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