The Geist Jackpine Sonnet Contest is at its halfway point and the entries are rolling in. To make things interesting Geist will post (with permission from the authors) a few submissions to the Geist Jackpine Sonnet Contest for your viewing. Each poem will be posted anonymously and comments on the poem will not be considered in contest judging.

So watch this space to find your muse and then write your own Jackpine Sonnet. The contest closes July 1st, so get writing!

Sonnet for the Distance Between Us

Your garden, once ten blocks from my front door. Red fence open, I’d find you poking dirt with a plain fork to tend sorrel, onions. Now this: 817 kms by plane. I’ve sensed this distance before, from the air— Rockies exposed beneath cloud like jawbones or vertebrae, splayed mass of the earth’s indifferent core. Where I write this poem the ground is frozen. You go walking, snap photos of impending spring, new buds, not knowing inside what is bound to happen will soon begin. Then you, speculum-scraped, aerated, will call to say despite this

distance the fence still swings open, sorrel.