hunkering down behind the soft
purple stone we cheat
the wind to eat a sandwich top
our pack, bearded grass keeps
the wool economy wax

paper wrap break—fast his silence:
the only thing that can’t
be manufactured is land. You can
tidy her up or let her run

derelict, but you can’t draw or erase the wild raw
sustenance she births, as we all must learn to bend even
moss & lichens most primitive
instinct lives beside the nettle red

*

Patricia Connolly studied poetry at the University of Notre Dame, where she earned an MFA. Currently, she lives and works in Chicago, where she teaches sociology and literature for a community college. In 2021, her chapbook Yeats’s Teahouse will be released as the first Permutations multimedia 3D poetry chapbook from Michigan State Press.