After the Winter
Each spring wears the perfume of baptism, of coming
up for air; we’ve been so down below
our toes have wrinkles frozen in months
of ice, and now we crack loose, open
our screaming eyes like newborns
dipped in a chalice of blood. Waking blooms
press into the bottoms of feet
and we are one—a fungal scent
like earth damp too long—and we are one
more year beyond our fishy histories, lively
and twitching like nerves afire. I am
a weeping chain, you the ancient lock,
and we rust in pleasant streams unfrozen.
Brian Baumgart (he/him) is the author of the poetry collection Rules for Loving Right (Sweet, 2017), and his poetry has appeared in a number of journals, including South Dakota Review, Spillway, Whale Road Review, and has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net awards. Brian is an English professor and previously served as the Director of Creative Writing at North Hennepin Community College. He was 2018 Artist-in-Residence at University of Minnesota’s Cedar Creek Ecological Science Reserve and co-coordinated the Minnesota State Write Like Us Program. He is the father of two teenagers. For more: https://briandbaumgart.wixsite.com/website.
Amethyst Review 