Associate Poetry Editor Nicolette Visciano on today’s poem: To dream of a haunting tenderness is to dream of “Fieldnotes” by Brian Czyzyk—an enchanting poem, whose delicate strength lies within this space carved between a story that is personal and a feeling that is universal. With a lilting rhythm that builds in momentum up until the end, the reader is ripped from Czyzyk’s trance with the final line, like roots pulled from the ground.

fieldnotes

The field of my early years
was thistle-choked brome,
not the Lolium streamers I dream
now, a confusion of weasels sentry
in a row, peering through

the grass toward something
edged from my mind’s frame.
To dream of weasels represents
a person or situation
you can’t trust. Sometimes

it’s myself I doubt, my hair
shorn short in winter, not like
the silk strands that bloom
through a stoat’s summer
brown. In the dream, an olive

tree preens its spiked crown.
To dream an olive tree means
peace, but to imagine black
olives is an omen of something
underhanded. I’m thinking now

about the time my first love
told me he didn’t really
feel things, had to crank
Sam Smith in order to cry.
I didn’t believe

he was telling the truth until
he wouldn’t talk to me.
I didn’t listen when
I told my friends this
and they said leave him—

too taken with the sigils
etched within his moleskin,
the silk ropes of his arms
taut around my waist.
If you were to ask me how

people are continually willing
to open themselves to hurt,
I don’t have an answer.
It could be hope that’s
the root cause of suffering—

the tree with all its dark
drupes pit-pattering
to the dirt. Better
to rip the thing straight
from the ground.

Brian Czyzyk is a poet from Traverse City, Michigan. He holds a BS from Northern Michigan University and an MFA from Purdue University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Tampa Review, The Offing, Ninth Letter, and Poetry Magazine. He is currently a Creative Writing PhD student at the University of North Texas where he serves as Poetry Editor for American Literary Review. He wishes you the best. Brian tweets @bczyzykwrites

If you would like to show your appreciation for the writer’s work, you can send them a tip through Venmo: @bczyzyk.