Sonnet For The Sound Of A Landmine by Will Summay

they say not to bury it, but before you blame anyone,

listen—children learn the kolo in school, leaping with

hands around their classmate’s waist, the posters on the wall:

do not wander into the tall grass—the distant pop of a creature

too fearless. a farmer?—& when it went off, a friend told us,

his head rolled down the hill—I never know what to say to you;

I always seem to get it wrong—experts say it could take several

more decades before everything is cleared away—“In The Disco”

by Deen plays at the coffee shop. a distant boom. a goat?—the map

of their locations like tributaries of exposed nerve endings—

a bang. a daughter?—movement is a calibration to our humanity;

ulteriority is one way of complicating movement—Danis Tanović,

the director of Ničija Zemlja, said in an interview: we all pretend

he’s alive & everything is fine but it’s not—silence. Isn’t it?

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Will Summay (he/him) is a poet and psychotherapist based in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the winner of the 2025 Page Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets from Michigan Quarterly Review. He has work forthcoming and published in the Shō Poetry Journal, South Carolina Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Columbia Journal, & Change, Queerlings, among others.