False Spring by Acie Clark

False Spring

Hiking in the heat of the afternoon, going to pick up from the farm after,

Sandra at the counter sees my shorts, warns about the cold front coming

and so it does within an hour down to 30 dropping fast.

The wind whips through the bamboo out back, whistling

winter is blue, living is gone: a cold front, a color field,

all the fields around colored back to that blue-gray again.

I think about calling her, or him, the two people I’ve most recently

spent time mourning, unwinding my particular sense of interdependent

romantic future from my relationship to our relationship.

It was easy with him, a root pulled at the end of its season. With her, it was

the braided weight of wisteria opening up the treetops to late winter.

At the farm I go for the extra pound of turnips.

I tell the dog as I open the door it's going to be different this time

so he’s prepared when he bursts outside.

I watch for surprise. I see his face.

Acie Clark is a writer from Florida and Georgia. A former writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he teaches in the Film, Theatre, and Creative Writing department at the University of Central Arkansas and as an Instructor at Interlochen Center for the Arts. His debut collection, Small Talk, was selected by Derrick Austin for the Hub City Press New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and will be published in 2026. His work is forthcoming in Quarterly West, Salamander, I Witness: An Anthology of Documentary Poetry, and Best New Poets 2025. Order Acie's book, Small Talk, from Hub City here.

Published 6/14/2026