Down the hill, some cows are staggered in a field,

just fleecing off the cold.

 

An hour and an hour.

Beside the road, mountains keep rising

in the rotten unrelenting.

 

The screaming wind continues to make us frail.

I sweep the cold against the doorframe.

 

It is the hundredth day, or more. Another sad one.

 

We know our immediate neighbors’ names.

We used to nod but now we hustle past

and pull inside—watch the deliberate fist of it.

 

Across the dirt, a coyote passes the old logs.

 

We sip stale soup.

Night husks to drifting snow.

 

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Lauren Camp is the author of two volumes of poetry, most recently The Dailiness (Edwin E. Smith, 2013), winner of the New Mexico Press Women 2014 Poetry Book Prize and a World Literature Today “Editor’s Pick.” Her third book, One Hundred Hungers, was selected by David Wojahn for the Dorset Prize, and will be published by Tupelo Press in 2016. Her poems have appeared in Brilliant Corners, Beloit Poetry Journal, Linebreak, Nimrod, J Journal, and elsewhere. She hosts “Audio Saucepan,” a global music/poetry program on Santa Fe Public Radio, and writes the blog Which Silk Shirt. www.laurencamp.com