Field 38
Because the physical infrastructure can no longer be used to die
by suicide. Because you thought that the birds were robins until
you looked up. Because the mountain trail (you can see it from
here) is broken into smaller trails. Because they are named after theorems
who perished there, gazing at hillocks in freeze. Because the lapidary’s
kiss was burnished with accrued interest. Because, tracing the furrows
in the music that the children are composing around you, you begin
to inhabit the prospect of sleep. Because all of the houses here
have red roofs and blue pools, and you would only ever know so
from this height. Because in a year it will not have mattered,
this moment whose beauty would not have been possible
without the preceding moment whose beauty was impossible.
Field 53
The immobile wasp, followed by the mobile flower
into the watched pasture, mistook your carmine
exit wound for a nozzle, an adorable trebuchet you
constructed but neglected to inform us of. Apologizing
for any inconvenience this may have caused,
you waylaid us with grave mien and sorcery.
In garb unbecoming and ultimately irreducible, you emoted
that the following development was unsuitable for our devotions:
Given shape, the paper orphanage was repurposed into an assembly
line for narcotic watercolors that concurrently repulse and attract.
The females produce a red dye, and the males are siege connoisseurs.
They fuck with flowers. They fuck and fuck without moving.
Alex Tretbar is the author of the chapbook Kansas City Gothic (Broken Sleep, 2025). As a Writers for Readers Fellow with the Kansas City Public Library, he teaches free writing classes to the community. His poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in APARTMENT, Colorado Review, Iterant, Kenyon Review, Narrative, Protean, Th
