Ansley Clark is from the Pacific Northwest. She is a teacher, editor, and MFA student at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Her poems and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from Sixth Finch, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Jellyfish, interrupture, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. You can find her at ansleyclark.com.
Failed Search Party
To replace absence with noise
is one kind of failure
like forcing one's flushed
cheek upon another's.
The irresistible swaying breath.
Afterward we stomped around
the cabin attending to things.
A skinny branch grew
an animal's drooping haunches.
Let me just say I did have
my hesitations that night did regret
the fraying temperatures like
falling columns of wolves.
I had such
a terrible hunger
returning outside often
to blow into my palms
to scan the dark erratically
with my violent flashlight.