November Theory

Andrew Hemmert
| poetry

 

God it’s cold but not so cold
that I would rather be asleep.
I just want a little quiet
and a lot of money, hallelujah.
Now I am a cartographer
scraping the frost from my windshield
to make the way clear—now my hands
are red as ancient, final stars.
Someone is always burning leaves.
Someone is always tearing off their shirt sleeves
anticipating summer, though summer waits
ashamed outside the torn screen door
of which we are the threshold.

Andrew Hemmert is the author of Sawgrass Sky (Texas Review Press, 2021). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review.

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