Poetry- Honorable Mention

The Antique Lantern

— bolted
to front yard
post— fused
there, transfixed
by traffic—
sockets humming
incandescent collisions—
antlered light
thrown over the snow

and the rope that once bound
fire to fat—fibrous
elemental tie trimmed past
the quick, moldered away—
consumed by its own
nervous flame—

in time
every bulbous filament
flakes and rattles
vacuum—

won’t you be
recollected
here, electric
in cellar rooms

where each etched shade
lids another     veiled light—
lilies of the valley stacked on shelves—

a fallow patch of fixtures hangs low
from ceiling beams:
tarnished brass, iron arms
reach to catch us crouching
to the workbench
halogen lamp, oil stains on
lamb’s wool—and little
lambsied ivy on the radio

upstairs, the lilac drifting in

Today

            is a porch       is a church
a watch-place we want
to catch up     a songbird
in the thatch

                     a squirrel
crawling atop a hedgerow
shorn bridge               shared wedge
we tend    to dodge

                                 adages
about its being      all
we have           and constantly
leave    now      let me     in this

                                  thistle time
touch both     thorn and tuft
heft and test      my own felt tensile
strength      my own lived tinsel   floss

Julie Lein grew up in Milwaukee, vacationing with her family throughout Door County and visiting her grandparents who lived in Sturgeon Bay. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, The Antioch Review, Phoebe, Colorado Review, Terrain.org, Barrow Street, and elsewhere.