the lake blooms a bright green more vivid than geckos.
When these blooms enter the household, it’s only natural
to collect them, place them in a glass vase, burn eyes
with pollen. Pink and orange petals flutter onto the table.

They say that algae blooms mean an overabundance
of phosphorus. It’s toxic.

We drink up facts, reap the consequences, even when
it’s not our fault. I am a wooden raft headed down
the river after a heavy rain. The water’s thick there.

I hope to make my way out of this sand trap
through storm into sunlight, no longer
hidden by mattress-stuffing clouds in
the endless overcast that is November.

Author’s note: This poem spent a long time percolating and undergoing changes, much like how lakes do each year. In 2014, a severe algal bloom formed on Lake Erie off the coast of Toledo, which led to extreme water restrictions (for drinking, bathing, washing dishes). The result of agricultural runoff, this particular bloom shows vividly how much we, humans, have adversely affected waterways of all sizes and shapes. I try to explore the beauty of such events and how they can become disastrous, and how often they may return. The blooms will be pretty severe this year, but not as bad as the ones a decade ago in 2014. That’s a small sliver of hope. And I hope we can find these slivers from time to time, not just here in the crevices of this poem, but elsewhere in the world.

Kevin A. Risner is from Ohio. He is the author of Do Us a Favor (Variant Literature, 2021); You Thought This Was Just Gonna Be About Cleveland, Didn’t You (Ghost City Press, 2022); and There’s No Future Where We Don’t Have Fire (ELJ Editions, 2025).

My favorite film has an original script;
is shot, and directed by me—
I’m the star, too, in a cast of three. 

Your wife speaks no lines. 
The opening scene starts after she dies

painlessly, expectedly, unavoidably—
you were prepared as one can be 
for the kindest possible removal 

of a sympathetic character, 
sadly unprotected 

by the plot. My character attends 
the graveside service—
notes her stiff hands do not claw

through the rain-black earth in protest 
of my presence. 
The sun supplants the clouds on cue, 

and I hold back
while out-of-focus mourners disappear
off screen conveniently. 

Our eyes connect with static shock—
the shot breaks to follow a wet, ripping sound 
near the trees 

at the far end of the cemetery—
a Cooper’s hawk has caught a vole. 

Her talons pierce and quell 
the fruitless struggle.

Her banded belly and golden eyes 
are striking against the faultless lawn

as she eviscerates her prey.
Nature undeterred and matter-of-fact
requires sacrifices. 

The camera leaves the carnage 
and we stroll towards your car—
lean back in easy silence

against the immaculate black of the doors.
We pass a flask of bourbon back and forth—
we’ve done this before. 

The lens zooms in to capture how your lips 
and tongue linger on the flask’s rim. 
Time slows, music begins softly, 

then swells, heightens 
the impression of a quiet, buried longing
which never dissipated

but collected itself; 
grew deeper without outlet over years.

I’m collected; controlled: not touching you, 
not leaning close—
despite memory of how you used to breathe 

in as I exhaled as if I were an antidote, 
and you a dying man.
The camera angle shifts to capture your hand 

surprising even you
as it finds its way home,

your thumb a gentle knife 
on the underside of my jaw— 
fingers hardly squeezing 
the back of my neck.

The audience holds their breath. 
They know what kind of kiss comes next,
and no one

not me, not you, not the hawk, 
has done anything 
wrong at all.

Author’s note: I have often been asked if I ever write happy poems and or love poems. The answer is, to the first, I think never, and to the second, only if the love poem explores the pain, grief, and hunger that so often accompany love. I recently reread this poem, written a few years ago, wondering if it didn’t need revision so much as the proper title was missing. The annoyingly cliched MFA workshop question rose up to face me, like a spectre: What’s at stake? The speaker of the poem here imagines a world where wanting what they cannot have is not transgressive, but totally acceptable, socially, morally, and emotionally. Issues of conscience are easily and matter-of-factly dealt with, something that is not possible in reality, but in the world of poetry, all one needs is imagination to open doors to possibility that reality locks up with impenetrable finality. I changed the title to reflect what is at the heart of this poem, which, in the imagination of the speaker, is bargaining about a longing that in order to be admitted to and explored, must occur within an ecosystem of morality.

Staci Halt’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, december Magazine, Salamander Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, Driftwood Press and others. She parents six rad humans, and a slew of cats, and teachers and writes near Boston, for now.