By: Glen Armstrong
No one complains about the humming birds,
but creatures that small are unnerving.
I back up to view the bigger picture,
and nearly trip over a moose head
that my neighbor has put out with the trash.
The houses here are too close together.
The flowers think of themselves as chess pieces,
the trees as ancient distilleries.
No one reads the instructions before
emptying the packet and planting the seeds.
No one is fast enough, nimble enough
to outdistance the details.
I feel that I’m part of this, a small part,
a broken part, at once here and elsewhere.
Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. He has three current books of poems: Invisible Histories, The New Vaudeville, and Midsummer. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and The Cream City Review.