The Glacier
Issue Two
Winter 2023

Out Here I Can’t Believe This World Isn’t Going to End

a golden shovel for Miami
after Marty McConnell

From my apartment, stepping out
onto Biscayne’s cement, walking to the bus stop, here
I mourn the cost of new buildings constructed for nothing. I
try not to think too much about sea levels, palm oil, ice bergs and heat. I can’t
comprehend what I read this morning: orangutans may die out in a decade. Believe

me when I say I want to know what you think of the prophesy: someday this
place will be legendary, wet and disappeared. Around the sinking world,
deforested generations will ask about what’s lost. What’ll we say? “It isn’t
what you think. We thought that we were magic; we were going
to turn ourselves around.” Even on the bus, I drift from the place we’re headed. It’s easy to
lose track of your stop when you forget and think you’re riding your familiar line to the end.

Reading Milosz on the Beach

That’s not the romance novel I was expecting,
a stranger says, towering above me
in electric blue swim trunks, gesturing
to the 700-page Collected Poems
splayed on my lap like a starfish.
 
Cross-legged in my two-piece swimsuit,
I’d been thinking:
I’ll never write enough. And at this rate,
there’s so much left to read.
Adding in my delusional musing of late,
I want to learn everything.
 
Once the man starts speaking,
I close my big book.
Wow, I didn’t realize you were studying,
he continues, gesturing
to the reef of Post-Its protruding
from Milosz’s side.
 
How long have I felt my intellect
is intrusive? In public space,
where poetry happens; in private space,
when it’s written down, I am afraid
that people will hurt me, so I’m careful
with grand pronouncements.
 
As this kind of artist,
I feel more comfortable
when I am invisible, of a piece
with the green-armored caterpillar
I find crawling, later,
on the targeted architecture of my thigh,
 
and with the gumball-sized crustaceans
covering the beach, waving their claws
in a language I don’t understand.
 
Perhaps all work, all real work,
involves studying, paying attention,
preparing to respond.

Milwaukee is in Wisconsin

People here don’t know where you’re from.
They say Iowa, Michigan, Pittsburgh.
You’re apologetic—Minnesota Nice—
when you repeat, “Milwaukee is in Wisconsin.”
 
Sometimes, you feel like you’ve been mistaken
for someone else. This is not a trade show.
 
You know where you began, but lately, you can’t
help but think about the end: a student
driving to a school with his gun,
an ex or stepfather or former employee
with ammo. People usually say,
disgruntled or disturbed, angry or acting-out.
 
You wonder, on-campus,
when a shooter will come. You take note
of the places in each classroom
where you’d dive or hide or die.
 
You are so unready to believe
in your vulnerability. You’ve never met
a sun as hot as a bullet, no matter
where you move. No matter
 
when you leave this earth, you hope
people remember your hometown.
 
Don’t mistake me for anyone, or maybe, mistake me
for everyone else. Your fear of such a shooting
is not the pain, for you hope it would be over
quickly, or the terror, a diluted version of which
you’ve already felt, but that you’d just become only one
of seven or ten or one-hundred, forgotten
name, forgotten origin story. You’re not ready
to be remembered.

Animal Family

I watched the dog breathe
                            barrel chest
                            hidden curious tongue
                            paw crossed over paw
 
I thought about the dog’s lungs
I watched the dog breathe
The domestic huff
The cry of the familiar
 
I watched the dog
breathe and adopted
attendant concerns
 
cousin companion to cunning
grafted sapling with tongue-cleaned teeth
squired             I watched you and I watched the dog
 
move and breathe and sleep Your
curiosity retreating into your body
like a hand into a sleeve
a tunnel underwater
 
Each of you a port city
as the ocean of the house
filled with pink light

FREESIA MCKEE (she/her) writes about place, gender, and genre through poetry, creative prose, book reviews, and literary criticism. Recent work has appeared in Fugue, About Place Journal, and Porter House Review. She works as an Assistant Professor of English at UW-Stevens Point. You can read more at FreesiaMcKee.com.

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