JANNA KNITTEL

FALL/WINTER ISSUE #07 POET

Janna Knittel is the author of Real Work (Nodin, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Minnesota Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook Fish & Wild Life (Finishing Line, 2018). Knittel has also published poems in Blue Mountain Review, Constellations, North Dakota Quarterly, Pleiades, The Trumpeter, and The Wild Word as well as the following anthologies: Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Anthology (Split Rock, 2018); The Experiment Will Not Be Bound (Unbound Edition, 2023); and Broad Wings, Long Legs: A Rookery of Heron Poems (North Star, forthcoming 2024).

THE EDGE OF WINTER

Tired of drinking

waterways of thought,

I lower the curtain on the day,

walk at sunset to the lake,

trace black glass water

soon to be reborn as ice.

I hear a distant sob,

a voice I know.

I ask the loon

what holds her up.

I hear her cry,

The moon.