Image: “Flower Meadow in the North” by Harald Sohlberg.
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PERFECT EDGE
DANE HAMANN
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after “Flower Meadow in the North” by Harald Sohlberg
Holy moon. Sleepy house. River smile. A daisy-studded tongue still glowing with stubborn northern daylight. A welcome silence laid like a razor on the cheek. A perfect edge around summer’s mouth. |
Image: “Olive Trees” by Vincent van Gogh.
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OLIVE TREES
DANE HAMANN
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after “Olive Trees” by Vincent van Gogh
If the gnarled olive trees teach me one thing as they curl cupped-hand-like toward the yellow spout of sun, it’s that we reach for that which hurts us. The trees stretch into a cloudless pool of radiating light. Their dusty green leaves slender as flames. Lavender shadows flowing like rivers across the orange heaves of dirt. Even the ghostly mountains, a canopy of linen rising blue and billowy over the olive trees, seem weak and washed out as they stagger across the unforgiving sky. This is a dizzy dance, this begging for and being wounded by sunlight. The trees know exactly what it is that they want. I believe I do too. But the trees and I share a secret. We are also waiting for the sky to soften with rain. The difference between us is that when I venture out into the brilliant, hot day, I sway from shadow to shadow, drifting around the sun-strewn orchard of my thirst. While the trees stay rooted, twisting like broken bones in the dry soil, stark desire burned into their bold limbs. |
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Dane Hamann works as an editor and indexer for a textbook publisher in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, later serving as the poetry editor of TriQuarterly for over five years. His chapbook Q&A was published by Sutra Press and his micro-chapbooks have been included in multiple Ghost City Press Summer Series. His first full-length collection A Thistle Stuck in the Throat of the Sun was published by Kelsay Books in 2021.
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