G-NT3806KSJP
︎

Window


   


Outside the screen,
epitome of a spring day.
Excessive, nearly, the new leaves’
reassertion of green.

On this side of the frame, me
and a hornet.
Being where it is, crushing
the thing is requisite.

When I lift the heavy book away,
one half is severed from the other.
The fore is still crawling.
The back is what can sting.

So why not let the head continue
telling the appendages to move,
to grapple about, exploring
for escape routes.

Which is the horror
you can’t bear to see?
Which the survivor
to watch and admire?

Never mind the winter.
How cold it was,
how these trees
which you’re now saying look

so pretty, healthy,
had everything taken and
will, in a matter of months,
lose it again. Today,

just a thin mesh is between
the chartreuse profusion
and you.
Today, you can walk

to the other side
of the window and by that mean
amongst respirating, growing
beings. Away

from the broken winged body.
It will find grace only
in concession, when it quits
its little spasm and twitch.




.
Rose McLarney’s poetry books are Colorfast, Forage, and Its Day Being Gone, published by Penguin, as well as The Always Broken Plates of Mountains, from Four Way Books. Her book of lyric essays, Rubble Masonry, will be published in March 2026 by Louisiana State University Press. She is co-editor of A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, from University of Georgia Press, and the journal Southern Humanities Review. Rose has won the National Poetry Series contest and received fellowships from MacDowell, Bread Loaf, and Sewanee, among other awards. Her essays and poems have appeared in journals including The Kenyon Review, New England Review, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Review. Rose is a Lanier Endowed Professor at Auburn University.