Acie Clark | Annual Honesty | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Acie Clark is a multi-genre writer from Florida and Georgia. He has taught at the University of Central Arkansas, Interlochen, the Provincetown Public Library, and as a mentor with Sunhouse. His work has been supported by the Fine Arts Work Center and the Collegeville Institute, selected for Best New Poets 2025, and anthologized in Divinity in the Margins, I Witness, and The Florida Anthology. His debut collection, Small Talk, was selected by Derrick Austin for the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize from Hub City Press. Recent work is or will be published in Adroit, Strange Hymnal, the Louisville Review, and 14 Poems.

Acie Clark's Website

Also by Acie Clark: Small Talk Two Poems Tornado Season

October 21, 2026

Acie Clark

Annual Honesty

Rain in the morning does my crying for me All the seasonal coastal geese sit on a moored boat in the process of shifting their range and dying of bird flu Mirror of our efforts to proceed alongside the poison in the disaster meat, a new arms deal, a new month, another month, of genocide, another whale jaw broken in two by a commercial trawl line, another starving species In these first days of winter the seed pods, empty of seeds, make a field of windows emptied of glass: a bed of open eyes At some critical place inside me I feel underprepared, unpracticed Nick says the day his child was born he felt himself begin without belief to believe in another world, not heaven, but some possible, survivable future I envied him as he spoke The nature of all grace — in its appearance —

I wrote this poem when I was living in Provincetown a couple winters ago, and there was a path I'd take with my dog that was lined with this flower a friend called "annual honesty." Once the cold came, I finally understood why: the seedpods go translucent and you can see right through them. It was one of those strange, rare moments where the image brought together the constellation of a poem I'd really been struggling to figure out.