—space between pickets— by Matthew Guenette

I'm going to study the yard. This is

what I'm thinking, standing in the kitchen


(in a brief parenthesis of calm in

the afternoon's demands) looking out the


back door's blue-latticed windows at the wet

yard littered with unraked leaves. Marking


the wood fence at the far end—its gnarled and scoured

tones of brown, the spaces between pickets


where slim fingers of lilacs have poked through—

I read it left to right, the fence ending


in exclamation. Shrubs, telephone pole,

a towering tree whose leaves have brightly


yellowed. The tree, what's its name? Already,

there's something I don't know.

Matthew Guenette's first book, Sudden Anthem, won the 2007 American Poetry Journal Book Prize from Dream Horse Press. I have work forthcoming in decomP, Umbrella, and the Versus Anthology (Press 23, 2009).