Poetry: Rebekah Stout

Rebekah Stout (Poetry 2010) is the assistant poetry editor at Slate and a lecturer in poetry at Boston University. She won the 2009 Poetry International Prize, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slate, Salmagundi, and Poetry International.

 

IN THE GARDEN

This is how it went after the war:
those left dropped their whistles, torches,
guns, their implements of trade, their sweethearts,
and began to dig

towards the center of the earth where
they laid the maculate bulbs of each brother
swaddled them in damp shadow in dark
soil and for a while

waited. No one knows who lost patience first.
Who scattered a white confetti of crosses
to mark that place for future harvest
where we feared

only grass would grow. Where the old burnt horse
of victory grazes. Where children play, and a few
sit cock-eared to the grass, saying “So quiet I can almost
hear it.”

—
“In the Garden” was originally published in Poetry International 17 2011.