[the branches thus fallen are glyphic
yet dumb]

by john fry

ice overpopulated fairy rings, leaving mushrooms in the minority the May morning after.

I wanted to be sure to reach you—

neither self nor soul but, unsaid, the shadows of.

psalmic, hardly, but the air’s nevertheless charged.

if the koan of water is water, what’s the koan of golf ball sized hailstones?

what does dark matter not touch inside.

to be sure, I wanted to—

if a supposedly inscrutable God has a garment with an almost graspable hem, the Milky Way is the finest piece of embroidery I’ve ever seen.

Ghost Ocean 19

Originally from South Texas, John Fry's poems have been published in West Branch, Colorado Review, Blackbird, Waxwing, Tupelo Quarterly, and Devil's Lake, among others. His work has been anthologized in New Border Voices (Texas A&M, 2014) and the forthcoming IMANIMAN: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute). The author of the chapbook silt will swirl (NewBorder, 2012), he is a graduate of Texas State University's MFA program and a poetry editor for Newfound Journal. He currently lives in the Texas Hill Country and is a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies medieval English literature.