Winter Stranger

Winter Stranger poems Jackson Holbert MILKWEED EDITIONS © 2023, Text by Jackson Holbert All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415. (800) 520-6455 milkweed.org Published 2023 by Milkweed Editions Printed in Canada Cover design and illustration by Mary Austin Speaker 23 24 25 26 27 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Holbert, Jackson, author. Title: Winter stranger : poems / Jackson Holbert. Description: First edition. | Minneapolis, Minnesota : Milkweed Editions, 2023. | Summary: “Jackson Holbert’s Winter Stranger is a solemn record of addiction and the divided affections we hold for the landscapes that shape us”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2023001105 (print) | LCCN 2023001106 (ebook) | ISBN 9781639550418 (hardback) | ISBN 9781639550425 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Drug addiction--Poetry. | LCGFT: Poetry. Classification: LCC PS3608.O482873 W56 2023 (print) | LCC PS3608.O482873 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6--dc23/eng/20230110 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023001105 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023001106 Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world’s endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Winter Stranger was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by Friesens Corporation. for Olivia and for my parents Contents For Jakob I 2003 We Learned the Mountains by Heart The Christmas Poem Letter from Nine Mile Letter Sent and Subsequently Returned by the Mailman These White Letters Look Nothing Like the Snow For Taylor The 26th Birthday Poem The Lamps IIThe Book of Jakob Unsent Letter to Jakob Another Winter Poem Jakob in the Basement Another Summer Withdrawal Poem Waking in the City Unfinished Letter to Jakob Poem with a Smoke Cloud Hanging in It After Rilke Poem One Last Poem for Jakob III World War I Poem World War I Poem Evil Nature January Fragment Burying the Dead High Up on the Mountain Love Poem to the Terrible Doctors Poem Containing No Pills After C.D. Wright Dream Where the Men Are in My House, Eating My Food, and Stealing My Ideas IV Landscape The Water Poem Two Pastoral Poems The Uncle Poem Moth Notes Acknowledgments The earth loved us a little I remember —RENÉ CHAR, translated by MARY ANN CAWS For Jakob When we travel the dead travel too. That is the law and the law is full of dreams. It’s April. We’re dying again, all of us, among poplars, among blueberries and hail hard as ball bearings. The news says wildfires are burning all over the county. I wake from the couch I’ve been sleeping on for weeks. I put on my grayest shoes, blow ash off the deck with a hose. I sit in the yard and close my eyes. I left that town forever. I dreamed, rarely, of streams, of blackbirds. I drew everything we did to the trees, everything the trees did to us. I drew it badly and spent years trying to draw it well. Eventually, I stopped. I 2003 Say a girl two towns over beats a cat to death with a padlock and goes to bed Say you’ve loved the girl for years and you want her to lay you down and count your knuckles in the dark and she wants you to lay her down and wring the salt water out of her blue hair Say sorrow is a place filled with people and cars and the ruins of mountains and pine needles the color of your mother’s hair Say the hawks wheeling above the river are just hawks Say it to the hawks We Learned the Mountains by Heart We went to school we ate pink beef we drank lots of water we snorted ritalin our nostrils turned red we lifted weights we killed a mama moose we sold her teeth online we poked each other’s muscles we laid our large bodies down on docks and smelled the wind we bucked hay our skin was hard we touched our palms together speeding down the highway we turned the headlights off and felt a little holy we were strong but we were thin we slept on couches we tore rotten stumps with our big hands we swaddled our little sisters we wrestled our dogs we punched each other in the kidneys we shinnied up magnolias we closed our eyes we watched moonlight spread across the snow we went to church we pelted magpies off the cherry trees we trapped a spider and then we let him go The Christmas Poem there are thousands Letter from Nine Mile Last night