Early October

by Hannah Silverstein

“Postcard 1” by Jean Wolff

with a line from Steve Lane

Tree-sifted light on tire track,

how the fall woods empty—

illusion, of course, says the rifle crack

chirrup-chirrup of startled rodent

dog sniff-sniffing in the rust-worn goldenrod

alert to acorn drop and chickadee.

Those contrails through the branches, so high and yet

still tethered, there was no getting away

from anything, dog yanking the leash

                        —admit it, my father said,

                        words scraping across hardwood—

voices entering

through these blighted saplings

Hannah Silverstein is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. A 2021 Best of the Net finalist, her poems have appeared in Dialogist, Orange Blossom Review, West Trestle Review, Cider Press Review, LEON Literary Review, Whale Road Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Terroir Review, The Ekphrastic Review, SWWIM Every Day, and The New Guard. She lives in Vermont.

Jean Wolff has had group and solo exhibits in various galleries in New York City and internationally. In addition, she has published 145 works in 95 issues of 58 magazines. Born in Detroit, Michigan, she studied fine arts at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, receiving a BFA in studio arts. She then attended Hunter College, CUNY in New York, graduating with an MFA in painting and printmaking. She is now part of the artistic community of Westbeth in Manhattan.