Charles and Fanny Fay Wood Poetry Prize, 2017

 

 

i. a hollowing

 

 

         —and through loss      

we learn to become

professional mourners

art acts as a dumb

and droning

eulogy that extends far longer

than the joke of death

until the only things we

  remember of                               

the dead are abstractions

a shade of violet

a whisper                            

hanging in the hall                           

a grotesque with

riverbeds carved into their forehead

                                       we are taught that                  

the mannequin in the coffin is a hoax

                                     a critique from nature:                                                     

the podium is taken by relatives

and good friends and lovers

 far more dead than

the sawdust and formaldehyde

stinking fragrance central in the room                 

and they talk a great deal about how they and their

memories used to dance 

at the edge of the river and now everything is a metaphor of river

holy is the river of jordan

holy is pulaski bristol front royal roanoke lynchburg blacksburg

       baltimore

how unnerving is the threat of cancer as a biological entropy

    how appalling is 

        a vision with tubes in the nose and smoking out of the bathroom

    window and how the home is turned into

     hospice sterile and catheters and

andand—the mountain the mountain here

zion sweet your god your heaven where is the

oh my god o— 

holy is how they stop breathing we wait for the next inhale that

never comes and it never comes and it

and tears streaming and mucous 

    cannot revive this limp cold mass

gather gather here is the body here is what you love

we a copse of mourners rooted about the

deathbed wreathe the body in sorrows and proclamations and 

    anointments and tender andand            and

 

ii. a closing 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

some nights i am 

weeping and you

are a closed door

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iii. a history

 

you who are the halo orbiting my tongue 

you whose blood is pith and oil

you who held my hand in supermarkets 

you who lived pregnant with cancer until 

it born itself from your corpse

you who drinking your own bile saw your

sister in the corner of the room

who was there to lead you

into heaven

you who are the blue jacket i wear in rain

you who in my heart are everything i love

and hate about the holy bible

you who raving sought out the ghost of

my grandfather in a country song

you who sang me lullabies wearing the skin 

of an alligator

you who half asleep sent me away knowing

we would never see each other again

you who died as i slept on a train

dreaming political shouting and

weeknight game show

you whose ashes sit on my mother’s shelf

you who dreamt very little and never had

the time to write your memoirs

you who come into my dreams and are well

but even in my dreams are still dying

you who are a dream messiah

you who screamed

you who stumbled through the house bleeding

womanhood trailing down your leg

you who bled yourself out for two years

you who first held me because my mother was

soaked in delirium

 

iv. a closing pt. 2 

 

the scar across your abdomen

[from the surgery that time you had a hernia]

used to dance from left to right and your

broken ankle reminded me that 

    humans are fragile things

 

i remember you speaking in a rough untrained voice

eyes searching my face like a child

i could have sworn you were frightened

you were taking me in 

clinging to what

you had left of me

i closed your door and let you sleep