i.

Tongue unfurls in ruins, low
& guarded as if each syllable unsheathes
a fresh wound. Severed: foreign bodies
clutch foreign limbs. No place
for proper burials, only
tacit uprisings.

ii.

Wander through deluge / shield / from
gusts of windsong / shingled eaves

rise / dreams are
not yours to be / shared

legacy of no/bodies

iii.

Heft hems craving, atrophies
into opal bone fields where
spring's bounty bursts unshut
to expose new realms.

There's no place like home
There's no place like home
There's no place like home
There's no one place

unmoored: tears glint
like oceans among the weeds.
In winter, sleet melds into
mammoth banks sighing loss.

iv.
 
Accused of siphoning honey from hive, blood thickens then winds along ravines where tubers are exposed to a certain density. Woe spills into ceramic pots already splintered & mended, balanced gingerly on the heads of ancient women climbing steps carved along the lip of steely mountains.
 
v.
               Family trees reduced
                                                     to oral
   traditions, cauterized     dead
                                              ends of dendrite filigree:
                                                                                          personalities
                               of myth, disintegrating
                                                                         like vapor, apparitions
                that whisper: Don't you dare
                                                                 forget
                                                                            me. Don't forget.

vi.

Wilderness: oh how
it bewilders! Head west
toward the wilting
sun—cardinal
vanishing point.

In darkness,
children morph
into beasts rabid
from diets of artificial
commodities. Trade origin
for sugar: they forget
their given names.

vii.

Ballet of looped
               (y)earnings: mirrored
                                                        Wall: begin
                                                                             & end: end
                                                                                          & begin: begin & end:
                                                                                                                          &&&
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"A Conversation with Poet David Ferry"

"A poem about a real life painful situation is therapeutic because it actually intensifies the pain by confronting it directly, but talks about it by, so to speak, singing about it, and therefore the pain is presented to oneself and to others as a kind of pleasure, not happy pleasure, but often a lamenting pleasure, often very dark, but transformed into art." 

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Martha Rhodes on Theodore Roethke's "The Geranium"

"I really heard him. He was talking to me. He was sitting on my bed, drunk and slurring as he said it and he was saying (confessing) 'And that was scary' to himself, but also—I repeat—to me. I was stunned. I thought, 'He can do that? He can do that?'"
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