Katharine Whitcomb

Jupiter in Retrograde

October through early February, the horoscope said
there will be second guessing what is already known.

Intuition should be balanced with the rational mind was the
advice, how to accomplish this maneuver not given.

& something happened to the landscape, I tell you,
that season—the leaves detached & drifted down

exposing the people to each other like an old evil
story nobody believed until the dragon got hungrier

& ate them too. The first omen was the wasp swarm
caught inside the woodstove, soot-jacketed, blind,

dying, crawling over their stiff comrades. Then
a flock of migrating grackles posted up in a dead

tree, their hoarse laughter swelling like gossip.
In grey daylight, them lifting, landing like some

uncomfortable guests anxious to leave. They blew
through on a warm wind, unseasonal, dissembling.

& lastly, postscriptive, fell a hissing, needled sleet.

Katharine Whitcomb is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, including Habitats, published in January 2024 from Poetry NW Editions in the Possession Sound Series, Saints of South Dakota & Other Poems, which won the Bluestem Award, chosen by Lucia Perillo, and The Daughter’s Almanac, which won the Backwaters Prize, chosen by Patricia Smith. Her poetry and prose are published widely in journals including The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Bennington Review, On the Seawall, Tupelo Quarterly, Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review and Quarterly West. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and is the recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and elsewhere. She lives in northern Vermont and loves marzipan.