George Witte is the author of An Abundance of Caution (Unbound Edition Press,2023) , Does She Have a Name? (NYQ Books,2014) , Deniability (Orchises Press,2009) and The Apparitioners (Three Rail Press,2005) . His work has appeared widely in journals and in several anthologies, including The Best American Poetry. He received Poetry's Frederick Bock Prize for a group of poems, and a fellowship from the New Jersey Council for the Arts/Department of State. He lives with his family in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
Buckled up by continental
Grind so slow and powerful it
Fused frail-boned fossils of an age
Long dead into an iron spine,
...
There's something to be said
for sitting still and letting things come clear,
the way morning fog burns off the lake.
...
The gym's ball-light cast silhouettes,
blue stars that swarmed the stage, then disappeared.
In scarlet caps and snowflake wings
your class lined up, obedient, to sing.
...
Chains barricade the gravel exit ramp
our bankrupt state abandoned years ago.
Unlatched, the way descends to miles of road
invisible on maps, near overgrown,
...
Go watchfully in humid fog
emerging on the first warm day
with skeins of birds and dogs unleashed
...