by Han VanderHart

I circle the cemetery
to both schools, and back
say good morning
to the dead
lodestone among us:
silent, unsoliciting, present
hawks and pines
have entered my life before
as deep image
but now it is the night train
and its whistle
dream where I am lost
in a large station
train running beside me
on the way to work
and the dead
and their headstones
by the gas station
and the train
and the way
we are all travelling
circling the cemetery
in the winter sunlight
children in the back seat
fingerprinting the windows
living and tired
and needing
to lay their heads
on my chest
in the evening,
the light short
and the dark early

Han VanderHart is a genderqueer writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry podcast and co-edits the poetry press River River Books with Amorak Huey. SM: @hanvanderhart.bsky.social