Opon | Issue 6
3.25.19
Katie Naughton
up the brown hill
runs off the backs of what we have not burned
time again turns returns the small
parade small town I left you came back
broker and with a richer accent to sit
again in the house where time passes
like in dreams suspended and waiting
like there’s not the whole world out there wasn’t
there slow afternoons early slip of night
slow time on the floor this is the place I wasn’t
alone in memory the town pulled down trees
tore down the park built close houses we lived
in small woods like the whole world wasn’t
in snow in summer waiting for us to go
in small woods like the whole world wasn’t
we were trying to catch fish and didn’t
and wanted to eat them carry them up
the hill on bicycles too hard to pedal
should have known was an easy place to fall
from to edge around the small valley child
-hood made of the place your father at night
in his cold swimming pool you still fish your
father died I wrote you my first poem you
and my brother you stayed he left came
back the valley you canoe the Matta-
besset past the sewage there are meadows
Connecticut you drink too much you grow
your beard you do not rest the swimming pool
untended you fill it with what you catch
runs off the backs of what we have not burned
Connecticut river through brown stone brought
to Brooklyn the elevated body
another river abstracted valley
the money made work made the 1840s
a hole in the ground fills with rain
and rust the time does into us
in the morning I become no one leave
your bed before dawn up the river drive
home (Portland: come on over) to work break-
fast make the coffee for the world to make
the world to make the small money return
of time the day came up today again
up the brown hill the other side I see it
up the brown hill the other side I see it
quiet lay the hills lay on the hills light
afternoons snow books birches the college
made of library windows sheets of light
lay on the hills snow before the dark comes
down the valley the other side the water
made mills made canals made Utica
third city millions then rust how valley
fell into light and time into water goes
back to Manhattan I didn’t know I
was reading money’s war reading Em-
erson the richest I was and was not
in the library to try to see the hill
and valley before the dark comes down
Katie Naughton is a poet living in Buffalo, NY, where she is a PhD student in the Poetics program at SUNY - Buffalo. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Colorado State University. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming from jubilat, flag + void, Grama, and Lambda Literary’s Poetry Spotlight. Her poem “warming ending what it may you persist” won an Academy of American Poets College and University Poetry Prize in 2018 and was published on poets.org.