Geography | Ansley Clark

 Ansley Clark is from the Pacific Northwest. She is a teacher, editor, and MFA student at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Her poems and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from Sixth Finch, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Jellyfish, interrupture, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. You can find her at ansleyclark.com.       Failed Search PartyTo replace absence with noiseis one kind of failurelike forcing one's flushed cheek upon another's.The irresistible swaying breath.Afterward we stomped around the cabin attending to things.A skinny branch grew an animal's drooping haunches.Let me just say I did have my hesitations that night did regretthe fraying temperatures likefalling columns of wolves.I had sucha terrible hunger returning outside often to blow into my palmsto scan the dark erratically with my violent flashlight.