Evan Vandermeer
Gods Among Us
For some time now the sidewalk I’d take to work has been fenced off within a construction site. They’re building an art museum, and I’ve enjoyed monitoring their progress from across the street, where I can safely watch the sparks spit from their tools as they move up and down the building’s rising inner structure. Their pace has been remarkable—seemingly overnight that small patch of wetland became a gaping pit, and in no time that pit began sprouting steel. And now, from out of nowhere they’ve erected four stone Grecian columns at the unbuilt entrance, without which the columns look out of place and idle with nothing to uphold. You can almost believe the workers grew impatient and—toiling in the mud, eager to behold something other than metal—skipped ahead in the building plan, just this once.
the narrow stair
looking down at mountains
from a dream
About the Author
Evan Vandermeer lives outside Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and daughter. He received his MA in English with a concentration in creative writing from Indiana University South Bend. His haiku and haibun have appeared in Acorn, cho, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, and The Heron’s Nest, among other journals. His haibun “Pippin” was awarded third place in the 2022 HSA Haibun Contest.