Cynthia Atkins
Summer 2025 | Poetry
Poem With No Ending
The stars offer no answers, so I go about
my business, as if a cheap tourist in a flea market.
Through the windshield, only fog,
I searched for the finish line, but every blurry
edge looks like a deep fake. Now all is false
information—What came first, the rooster, the egg
or the imposter? Up is down, down is up.
I go to the sunset at day’s end, but tomorrow is filled
with groceries, oddities, quarrels put to bed
with a gentle touch under lamplight. Breath is light,
but living is cumbersome. I yearn not to stop
at traffic lights. The prairie shivers in December
like humans swaying in the grandstands. This is half-time.
But I remember being exiled from the pretend of childhood.
It was abrupt, no going back. So, I consume the landscape,
keep driving, while grief looks for a homeland.
Cynthia Atkins (She, Her), originally from Chicago, IL is the author three books, most recently, “Still-Life With God” also, Duets,
a collaborative chapbook from Harbor Editions. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, BOMB, Cimarron Review, Diode,
Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Permafrost, Plume, and Verse Daily. She earned her MFA. from Columbia University.
Atkins has earned fellowships and prizes from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, SWWIM Residency @TheBetsyHotel Writer’s Room,
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Writer’s Voice, and Writers@Work. Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, VA.
More work and info at: www.cynthiaatkins.com.