Wendy Chin-Tanner

ADVENT

ever green
who waits four
Sundays for

the end of
the year clear
brisk air of

night the moon
a small ball
in passing

empurpling
a stripe of
vaulted black

sky a wreath
of the sun’s
shadow light

reflection
of a star
you are dust

the dust you
tell yourself
of some dead

star staring
back to see
how far you

have fallen

Wendy Chin-Tanner is the author of Turn (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards. Some of her poems and essays can be found at The Collagist, The Rumpus, The Huffington Post, xoJane, RHINO, Denver Quarterly, and The Mays Anthology of Oxford and Cambridge. She is a founding editor at Kin Poetry Journal and poetry editor at The Nervous Breakdown.