Andrew Hemmert

“In that day, the Lord will punish with his sword, his fierce, great and powerful sword, Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea.” (Isaiah 27:1)

Ignore the koi
pond empty of koi.
Ignore the rain

tree marked
for eviction
with yellow

spray paint. Ignore
the rum-laughing
college girls

straddling
a plaster mammoth
for a photograph.

     What’s left? A dragon-
     fly balances
     on a century
     plant’s prongs. A

     rabbit grazes untamed
     grass under
     a cracked raptor. Look
     here, in this
     raptor’s toothless mouth.
     Every night, the orb
     weaver eats its own
     web and rebuilds.

ANDREW HEMMERT recently graduated from the University of South Florida. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing and a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology. He will begin a Creative Writing MFA at Southern Illinois University in the fall. His poems have appeared in Driftwood Press, Symmetry Pebbles, and thread.