JANNA KNITTEL 

DRIFTLESS

Rife with knife-edge ridges,

meandering rivers, pools.

You can’t get from here to there

without hairpin turns,

contusions, bruises. 

Minnesota’s Bermuda Triangle,

Sargasso Sea, or Trees

of Mystery, where caves, sinkholes,

and disappearing streams pock

the landscape. Immersed in complexity,

you could lose yourself in twists

and turns and never see horizons.

Give up, the landscape cries.

Give in. You can’t drift

over paths of least resistance.

Beneath the surface lie sandstone, limestone,

dolomite bedrock. Scrape past quartzite,

rhyolite, monadnock. If you were a glacier

you’d dig down to gems.

Janna Knittel is a writer from the Pacific Northwest who lives in Minnesota. She earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota. She has published a chapbook, Fish & Wild Life (Finishing Line Press), as well as poems in Cold Mountain Review, NEAT Magazine, Nice Cage, and Whale Road Review.