what do you expect was available for repast that day in black river falls? a plate of cabbage, black bread, stewed apples— all bewitched, a vexed and vexing table.
twin pillars of the family—perched, fat mournful crows, caught in the open iris, waiting for justice to be dispensed, a stag’s head between them where the scales once sat.
the only way we can get the train to stop is by laying something on the tracks. it can’t be convinced to carry our things.
if you look out across the low field, you will often find her there, dragging her trunk home, full of witch hazel and mayfly wings.
Cole Roulain (He/Him)
photo credit: Adrian Whipp
Cole Roulain lives and writes in Vermont and is a citizen of the Comanche Nation.
Poet’s Note
“Black River Falls” was inspired in part by Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip, particularly its atmosphere of social fracture, rural isolation, and historical unease. I was drawn to the way the book’s archival photographs and newspaper fragments create a portrait of communal instability without overt explanation. The poem attempts something similar through lyric means, using landscape, residue, and implication to evoke a place shaped by economic pressure, inheritance, and psychic weather. Rather than directly retelling material from the book, the poem engages its tonal and documentary logic—its sense that history lingers in the physical and emotional textures of a region.
