The Lost Child: Ozark Poems, by Wesley McNair. The human reluctance to confront unpleasant truths constitutes the principal conflict of Wesley McNair’s poetic sequence
A brutal misshapen cold, and us unready. Whicker. Vessel-proof, failing. Dwarfed by things already shrunken. Wind making noise as it passes through our age,
The road’s rising pulled our car forward, like a throat drawing in a flake of coal with the clear mountain air. Everything was contrast:
At the battered table, streaked with paint like time-lapse stars, caught in their courses, we lean in. A spindle creaks. Oxidized fan blades spin