please advise stop [I was dragging a ladder slowly over stones stop]

Rusty Morrison

 

I was dragging a ladder slowly over stones stop
it was only from out of my thoughts that I could climb stop
not from the room please

my father's dying offered an indelicate washing of my
perception stop   
the way the centers of some syllables scrub away all other
sound stop   
his corpse merely preparing to speak its new name at the
speed of nightfalling please   

each loss grows from a previously unremarkable vestigial organ
stop   
will I act now as if with a new limb stop
a phantom limb of the familial please advise

 
From the true keeps calm biding its story by Rusty Morrison. Copyright © 2008 by Rusty Morrioson. Used by permission of Ahsahta Press.

Poems by This Author

basin of hills... by Rusty Morrison
in the decision of a beginning [3] by Rusty Morrison
No sensation of falling, which suggests that this condition may be flight
only gray rocks with drifting mist... by Rusty Morrison
please advise stop [I might travel his death a creaking and swaying beneath me stop] by Rusty Morrison
I might travel his death a creaking and swaying beneath me stop
please advise stop [my father's dying makes stairs of every line of text seeming neither to go up or down stop] by Rusty Morrison
my father's dying makes stairs of every line of text seeming neither to go up or down stop
please advise stop [the rustle of a Sunday bundle of newspapers tucked under my father's arm stop] by Rusty Morrison
the rustle of a Sunday bundle of newspapers tucked under my father's arm stop
wind is... by Rusty Morrison


Further Reading

Related Poems
please advise stop [I might travel his death a creaking and swaying beneath me stop]
by Rusty Morrison
Stone God and Goddess in an Ark
by Tom Sleigh
[without a listener]
by Maxine Chernoff
Poems about Language
Etymological Dirge
by Heather McHugh
I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Poem
by James Schuyler
Primitive State [excerpt]
by Anselm Berrigan
The Composition of the Text
by Adriano Spatola
The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
by Jack Gilbert
Tonight No Poetry Will Serve
by Adrienne Rich
Water Music
by Robert Creeley
What Is an Epigram?
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Yes
by Denise Duhamel
Poems about Loss
Affirmation
by Donald Hall
Ashes
by Paula Meehan
Burning the Old Year
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Catastrophe Theory III
by Mary Jo Bang
Challenger
by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
from Projection
by Lidija Dimkovska
Haunted
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Heavy Summer Rain
by Jane Kenyon
I Found Her Out There
by Thomas Hardy
I'll Try to Tell You What I Know
by Martha Serpas
Room in Antwerp
by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Some People
by Wislawa Szymborska
Song ["When I am dead, my dearest"]
by Christina Rossetti
the lost baby poem
by Lucille Clifton