Justin Boening
Justin Boening is the author of Not on the Last Day, but on the Very Last, a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series, as well as Self-Portrait as Missing Person, which was awarded a Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Fellowship. He is a recipient of the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, a work-study scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, a Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell University, and a Henry David Thoreau Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. His poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review Online, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Narrative, and TYPO, among others. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Boening is currently a senior editor at Poetry Northwest, and is cofounding editor at Horsethief Books.
Poetry by Justin Boening
You start to sing.
Your voice carrying from the house.
The words familiar, though I cannot make out the words.
Your voice a field, though there are animals in the field.
A rain begins in the leaves and ends in the leaves.
It’s late. The hero has returend––
unhelpful as ever. He’s hiding out
in the neighbor’s orchard,
steering clear of the constable.
The citizens have left empty
all the houses, all the shops––
the screen doors hollow on hinges,
a porch swing hinging by a chain.