​​​​ke rry

    ​j a mes

​​  e  vans

Kerry James Evans

Copyright 2019

Photo Credit: Jason Lee Brown

​Herb Garden

 

the arrow piercing a metallic globe

points to a concrete angel

cradling a pot of incense

while the rosemary grows wild

and mint gives way to sage

which sprawls like a body

discovering a divan the collapsed

trellis was once a ladder

for a rose the deer have since

eaten and don’t you know

that when a cowboy leaves

his boots out in the rain

his partner is bound to turn

those boots into planters 

for a host of herbs hell-bent

on leaving the lemons

hang low this time of year

and the cardinal may only sing

Latin but there is an eastern

bluebird with a red breast

chasing a wren away from its

nest while a kestrel nose-dives

for a squirrel and misses I

see it like a spool of thread

sees a hand holding a needle

​​Kerry James Evans

originally appeared in Salamander 46

Kerry James Evans is the author of Nine Persimmons (forthcoming from The Backwaters Press/University of Nebraska, 2026) and Bangalore (Copper Canyon), a Lannan Literary Selection. He earned a PhD in English from Florida State University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, and a BA in English from Missouri State University.

The recipient of a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, his poems have appeared in Agni, The American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and many other journals.

He is an Associate Professor of English at Georgia College & State University, where he serves as the Program Coordinator for the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs. He is the Co-Editor & Managing Editor of Peach, launching spring 2027. He lives in Milledgeville, Georgia.