(Dieter de Vroomen/Unsplash)

Where we’re going isn’t far,
            Nor is it fair.

Ain’t no bigtop with a round
            Of outhouses and sand,

Nor needlenosed sky-height
            With pilot-light

Or flares.
            No, nor anywhere.

Where we’re going has been thatched.
            It lets in such light

(Its hayseams must be spare as a tomb)
            That it recalls a sitting room

Where we grieve in mist, and must and most
            Of someone once here: thee, o Christ.

Spencer Hupp is a poet and critic from Little Rock, Arkansas. His poems, essays, and reviews appear in the Sewanee Review, Raritan, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Matters, the New Criterion, the Honest Ulsterman, Mantis, Cortland Review, and the Times Literary Supplement, among others. Hupp was most recently named a semifinalist in the 2021 92Y Discovery Contest. He currently serves as an MFA candidate and graduate instructor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

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Published in the July/August 2022 issue: View Contents

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