Ian U Lockaby

Ian U Lockaby lives in New Orleans but spent nearly a decade as a farmworker in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of Defensible Space/if a crow—, forthcoming from Omnidawn in 2024, and his recent work appears in journals such as Fence, Poetry Northwest, Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, Circumference, and Poetry Daily. He edits the online journal mercury firs.

Poetry – Issue 34

After Waking from a Dream in Which My Dead Friend Wrapped His Arm Around Me

And he had spoken my name, said I want to go with you— / it was then I remembered I was using his old flannel jacket // for a pillow on my unmade bed, lofted as it was / in a high red cedar. . . .