Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.
Hockey in the Anthropocene
by Sarah Carleton
They spill out like bees
from a hive and swarm the puck,
bent stingers leading—
all but the goal tender, who folds at the knees,
a crab on ice. No tide pool in sight,
no sunshine, no nectar,
just bugs flying amok in a freezer.
We wore flip-flops an hour ago,
power walking from our parking spot
in a cranky tropical sweat,
and now perch on a chilly cliff of blue seats,
yelling, Let’s go, Lightning
while the Tesla coil sizzles with indoor weather.
None of this roar and shiver
makes the old kind of sense,
but our skate-blade scrape and checking
thwack—vocabulary adapted from a cold place
—grow out of cracks in the earth’s rhythm,
no weirder than derechos, lost bees
or continents of snow sloughing into the sea.
First published in Tar River Poetry
Sarah Carleton writes poetry, edits fiction, plays the banjo, and knits obsessively in Tampa, Florida. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Nimrod, Valparaiso, Rattle, ONE ART, Door Is a Jar, SWWIM, and As It Ought to Be. Sarah’s poems have received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and she is a finalist for the 2023 John Ridland Poetry Prize. Her first collection, Notes from the Girl Cave, was published in 2020 by Kelsay Books.
Don’t forget to read the Spring 2025 Issue, available now, online and in print
Previous Renaissance Poets
April Poets