What Comes After Certainty by Spencer K.M. Brown

See—it’s like that trash on the highway,
Wind-tossed wrinkled this way and that,
Ready to be ravaged under wheels
Or lifted.
Resting on the dead coyote
With the bumper-cracked bloody jaw.
And when you go to dinner tonight
You won’t think of it at all.
Not a moment.
And when you go to sleep tonight
You’ll recall its every wrinkled edge
And how it floated, weightless, for that split second
As you passed.
And you’ll think of it for a long time,
Years—especially when nothing makes a sound.



Spencer K.M. Brown is an award-winning poet and novelist from the foothills of North Carolina where he lives with his wife and three sons. His work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines. His debut collection of poems, The Salvation of Me, will be published by Press 53 in Fall 2026.