Two poems by John Mark Brown: "Cold Season" and "a burial"

John Mark Brown is a Southern Illinois native, a senior Creative Writing student at Eastern Illinois University, and a cardigan enthusiast. His writing has appeared in the Indiana Review.

"The Raven Tree" by Ken Allan Dronsfield

Cold Season


                   Stalks gone,
snapped        from earth
floor, ankles still
               erect in a forest
of dry reed.   Remember
standing                in old
          rows marked now
with those dead
stakes—        necropolis
for the winter months.

            Remember now
when birds return,
and old soil        shows
sun black bellies,
hungry
               to retch fresh
                              soy.





a burial

you put a piece of him in the ground
then packed the earth toe tight
a weight where it dried and cracked

in new summer heat
crushed it and hushed it in an arid silt

now come rain and new color
for the raw of the earth
and a looseness of new black grains
for the green to cut through to topsoil

erect from the surface and beaded
with baby wet clods

now imagine the stalk as it peaks
from its shallow trench
to pull from the mire of all that

~John  Mark Brown