Jackson Holbert

Improvisations on a Landscape

1

A year’s worth of children are born in a single week.

The placenta stand at the farmers market slashes their prices.

2

Someone’s uncle mails a letter to himself

to make sure there’s nothing funny going on.

3

A storm unfastens half the shingles in the neighborhood.

Morning, the lawns look paved.

4

An old man hobbles down to the river

and performs his own baptism.

5

Mother gave up gardening.

Every flowerbed filled with weeds.

6

The drought lasted for years.

No one thought anything had changed.

CP

Jackson Holbert is originally from Nine Mile Falls, Washington and now lives in Waltham, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal, A-Minor Magazine and elsewhere.