"Knot Willows" is an imagined narrative based on observations I made over the years as an outsider in my husband's Dutch family. I was haunted by these pollarded willows from the first time I saw them in the winter landscape. Soon after that I experienced them in van Gogh's paintings and drawings at the Kröller-Müller Museum. The poem came together when I discovered his mention of them in a letter to his brother Theo.

Jane McKinley is a Baroque oboist and the author of Vanitas. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. She received a 2023 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her second collection, Mudman, is forthcoming from Able Muse Press.

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