by Han VanderHart
Asterales: A Journal of Arts and Letters

woodlines and clouded skies, biscuits, blackberry patches and plastic buckets, the sticky summer sun, the motionless pond, whisper of wind in the wild carrot, your hands in a hotel room, a February crescent moon, glass of wine I did not finish in a Gatsby-style bar, you leaning towards me for a first kiss, what it means to be beloved, the rhododendron flowers browning after blooming, the magnolia’s cupped petals, the tender place behind your ear, my bare feet on wood floors after waking, the sighs of my dog, moisture in the morning air, how my grandmother cut the bacon as it fried, the abstraction I told myself I would not write here: longing and more longing

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Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, NC. They are the author of Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025), the chapbook Hawk & Moon (Bottlecap Press, 2025), and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021), and have work published in Poetry Daily, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and, alongside Amorak Huey, publishes River River Books.