To Make Room for the Sea

He teaches in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.

He is editor of Mississippi Review, a coeditor of Typo Magazine, and a book review editor for Kenyon Review.

Thank you especially to Michael Robins, Ada Limón, Monika Gehlawat, Natalie Shapero, Hanif Abdurraqib, Autumn McClintock, and Cate Peebles.

This book is for Penny Clay.

I’m forever grateful to everyone at Milkweed Editions, especially Joey McGarvey, Mary Austin Speaker, Daniel Slager, Joanna Demkiewicz, Lee Oglesby, Jordan Bascom, Shannon Blackmer, and Bailey Hutchinson.

I’m also grateful to the instructors and students at the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. Thank you to Claire Oleson for the first line of “Elsewhere.”

Thank you Jericho Brown, Maggie Smith, Traci Brimhall, Abby Travis, Patrick Thomas, and Chris Martin.

Thank you to the students at USM

colleagues in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi:

The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day Project, The Believer (online), Bennington Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Descant, Exit 7, Georgia Review, Grist, jubilat, Laurel Review, Los Angeles Review, Pinwheel, Poet’s Country, Poetry Northwest, Tin House, Seneca Review, and The Shallow Ends. This manuscript was completed thanks to the generous support of a Literary Artist Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission.

The leaves fall

up toward the sky. For every oak

tree fallen, let’s plant two more.

I am forty years old and just realized

I barely know myself and those

around me, but how much

hope lives within the fact

of what’s to come?