Margaret Hanshaw

New Year’s Day

A painting titled Clock depicts a forest at sundown
blues and purples—why does my eye
linger at the dead artist’s name my
index finger pointing swelling

the feeling of never going
home again, clock and window both
mean an opening closed by casements
or sashes fashioned out of trans-

parent material, January
1st, 2025, no one I know
dies or says I love you as two
iron rabbits on my mantel twitch for one

yoctosecond, six and a half years
ago my sister and I handpicked the family
burial plot, ten spaces under five
yellow birches.

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Margaret Hanshaw is a poet and writer from Sudbury, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, New American Writing, West Branch, Bennington Review, Verse Daily, VOLT, Vallum, Posit, Prelude and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Vermont College and is author of the chapbook Yellow Ripe (dancing girl press).