The Glacier
Issue Two
Winter 2023

Geometries of mayflies rise

while fires burn afar 

and ash falls



on a pond loud with longing 

not even water can extinguish

One Day

The last night of the hereafter will be
the beginning of Eden. Our future 
swung low once, and instead 
of gathering its filaments
into our safe deposit boxes, 
we ate them. 
They tasted of pine.
So when we cry into the hot seas,
into the dry wells, what we have left
is an old taste, distant, vaguely green.

Handyman

Yesterday’s orange boat is today’s orange boat
but today’s waves are their own
dark dashes on the bay.

Yesterday’s clouds, yesterday’s magnolia,
yesterday’s deer clicking up the street—
all gone.

But last night when the fireworks shot
the night loud and colorful 
all the dogs longed for today

with its breeze and quiet, with a man 
on the neighbor’s roof taking down
the bent metal poles of an old antenna.

California Summer

The window’s idea of a vista equals an idea of dust
the pulse of the passing train
the backdoor kicked in 
and everything we ever said kindly to one another
one tiny immolation.

Nothing lasts. But what if nothing matters
first? Bodies ride beside me morning and evening
take up space in their dreams and travels. Nothing.

I’ve laid so many plans nights to keep Orion
right in his sky, love in the sheets, the children
polite. 

Like the flames on a girl’s leg.
Like the recliner in the highway’s median. 
A central illogic, a sandwich, a void.

Please, thank you, you’re welcome.

Which might stave off one small negotiation,
which must be some small courtesy,

a 20-year plan in a 5-year world,
epistemologically speaking.

Patience is a Virtue

Here’s a wish for a girl who wants some new
act to follow, a man with some new taste
for the future of momentary bouquets.

The girl, the man, this breeze, a notion
that we might fall into spring. Whose hands picked the locks
of our regrets?  The box opened. 
The furies escaped. 

There won’t be a very long moment,
just short ones. If only there were enough love!

CULLEN BAILEY BURNS is the author of two books of poems, Slip (New Issues) and Paper Boat (New Rivers), both of which were finalists for Minnesota Book Awards in Poetry. Her poems have appeared widely over the years, most recently in Through Lines, The Colorado Review and New American Writing. She lives in Evanston, Illinois.

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