—Business Insider headline, January 13, 2017

so that
in a field

in the future
in the supposition

of some tent-
ative peace

one can
follow a loose

spray of tulips
or orange

cornflower
or the yellow

suns of
common

daisies’ flung
faces

in from arcs
they gather

in intensity
toward

a single
spot

they get
so thick

there is
no way to

stand there
without

crushing some
when one

stops thinking
to

savor
the scent

something
springish

ambiently hot
what may

or may not
incite

a comparable
gathering

of thought
like cloth

bunching
in a hand

extended to-
ward something

it is unable to
blot

the flowers
speak not

of sustenance
but

the sustained
ma-

king
of the lost

*

Charlie Clark studied poetry at the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in The New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Smartish Pace, Threepenny Review, West Branch, and other journals. A 2019 NEA fellow and recipient of scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, he is the author of The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2020). He lives in Austin, TX.