The bowl of the prairie.
Snowstarscatter.
All you needed was
to be embodied.
We had lived too long
alone, nothing weighting us.
Today, birds—
thick black crows
threading the air
with their dots and dashes.
The mouth opens
and closes. I keep losing
my thoughts but also
objects and intent.
All you needed was
a body to call your own.
I could not keep you together.
A cone of light funneling.
J.L. Conrad is the author of the full-length poetry collection A Cartography of Birds (Louisiana State University Press), and the chapbooks Recovery (winner of the 2022 Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize, forthcoming from Texas Review Press) and NOT IF BUT WHEN (winner of the third annual Dead Lake Chapbook Competition, Salt Hill). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Jellyfish, Sugar House Review, Salamander, Moon City Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.