Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

Sag Harbor in the morning

Are you ready      for the test      I failed
to mention         that this is the final
question of        and which started
when you considered     being a parent
means knowing       just how far
the north star      turns out to be
a streetlight      behind the city
planner’s office      only more so?
You already know      all the answers
are not the right ones      because it’s
the sort of test      you only prepare for
with a sense of self      that’s strong
enough      to ride a Ouija planchette
back out of the room      and mind
its own business      as you seventh
level chaotic neutral      your way
into showing your work      was never
anything more      than inventing songs
for the sidewalk trees      and for the
unseen varmints      who make a home
of the trees’ little Chicago-style      deep
dirt squares      into which they burrow

Brendan Lorber is a writer, visual artist, and teacher. He is the author of If this is paradise why are we still driving? and several chapbooks, most recently Unfixed Elegy and Other Poems. He’s had work in The American Poetry Review, Brooklyn Rail, Fence, McSweeney’s, The Recluse, and elsewhere. With Joe Elliot, he hosts Overhear a cross-generational reading series in Brooklyn in which at least one reader must live within walking distance of the venue. His visual art is in The Museum of Modern Art, The Free Black Women’s Library, The Woodland Pattern Center, The Scottish Poetry Library, and in private collections. It has been featured on CNN, NBC’s The Today Show, and Oprah. He’s edited Lungfull! Magazine, The Poetry Project Newsletter, taught writing workshops, and curated both the Zinc Bar Reading Series and the Segue Foundation Reading Series. He teaches fantasy cartography, and lives in a little observatory in Brooklyn

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx