We held each other as our bodies turned to smoke and rose above the burning leaves. Hawks plunged through us, carrying bits of us in their beaks. We settled on roofs, clung to nests and nets. We drifted and drifted like cirrus clouds, like long tongues licking the sky, like glittery trails. Below, mounds of ashes crumbled or blew away. When the rain fell, we vanished, nowhere and everywhere at once.
Jeff Friedman’s newest book, The Marksman, will be published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in fall 2020. He is the author of seven previous poetry collections, including Floating Tales and Pretenders. Friedman’s poems, mini stories and translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review, Poetry International, Hotel Amerika, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Poetry, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny, Solstice Literary Magazine, New World Writing. The New Republic and numerous other literary magazines. His rewards include a National Endowment Literature Translation Fellowship in 2016 and two individual Artist Grants from New Hampshire Arts Council.
