Brendan Stermer is a poet from Montevideo, Minnesota. His chapbook, Forgotten Frequencies, was selected as the winner of the 2023 Poetry of the Plains & Prairies Award and is out now from North Dakota State University Press.

He also makes a podcast called Interesting People Reading Poetry, which has been featured recently by MPR, the CBC, the Irish Independent, and the Los Angeles Review of Books Podcast Review.

He lives in northwest Minnesota and works as a writer exploring rural health issues across the country.

 

There’s a grumbling / in the belly of this city. / You can hear it at the bottom / of the swimming pool in summer. / Some say it sounds like static / from an old TV, but slow— / which is like the sound / of the snow falling / on all sides of my car, / parked by the edge of a stubble field / in January. / It is dusk . . .

There’s a grumbling / in the belly of this city. / You can hear it at the bottom / of the swimming pool in summer. / Some say it sounds like static / from an old TV, but slow— / which is like the sound / of the snow falling / on all sides of my car, / parked by the edge of a stubble field / in January. / It is dusk . . .