EXIT MUSIC
by JONATHAN WEINERT
Art by LENA GEMMER
I’ve been waiting a long time to hear it
but now that I do
I have a few notes
​
Out of the white sky comes a whiter cloud
that no creature on earth can breathe
​
A little more light please
toward the blind edges
and a little more thrum
as of insects or engines
​
I walk beside the burning river
on the knuckles of my broken knees
​
The small gray stones erupting from the river path
will go on being small and gray
and I will also go that way
without a car or library
​
There is still today and the rough outline of autumn
Winter birds
old gods
still eye the seed pods
flicking and indifferent
Along the riverbank the storm-thrown limbs
begin the thankless ministry
of giving back their chains
Their signature was scribbled on their absence after all
beneath the heading Endless Rest
​
Everything is whitening
and the sound that issues from the beaten oaks
makes music for the ones who now believe in nothing
which is god over growth and warmth and time
JONATHAN WEINERT is the author of three books of poems: "A Slow Green Sleep" (2021), winner of the Saturnalia Books Editors Prize; "In the Mode of Disappearance" (2008), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize; and "Thirteen Small Apostrophes" (2012), a chapbook. He is co-editor of and contributor to "Until Everything Is Continuous Again: American Poets on the Recent Work of W. S. Merwin" (2012). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Harvard Review, On the Seawall, Pangyrus, Good River Review, and elsewhere.
​
LENA N. GEMMER is originally from the quiet foggy town of Montara CA where she began her love of writing on her grandfather’s Remington Rand typewriter. Before deciding to pursue an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at University of New Hampshire, she received a BA in English and History from Allegheny College in Meadville PA. As a writer, she believes in connecting to readers on a visceral human level. When she is not in graduate school, you can find her taking photographs or scolding her Norwegian Forest cat Mitchy. Her photography has been published in Burningword Literary Journal, and the Wild Roof Journal. Her essay “Dinosaurs Before Dark” has been accepted at The Bangalore Review.