JACQUES J. RANCOURT

Bounding Wet Dark


and the fields are wet too,
and the grass, the questions

we press together to answer.

You are the last candle from the barn
I blow out. Sunday wish,

we are alive

only a short time. What is the purpose
of a field if not to lie in it?––

So we make the field

a field, myself
nothing more. Grasshoppers leaping

out of sight, I already know

what won’t happen. The night
pales at the pine scrim. We lie

beneath rotting stars.



186  The Paris-American

Jacques J. Rancourt was raised in Maine. His poems have appeared or will appear in New England Review, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best New Poets 2014, among others. He has received a Wallace Stegner fellowship from Stanford University and the Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. He lives in Oakland, California.

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  Next week's poet:

 Hieu Minh NguyenJJCCCACc