Hacked Up On One's Own Ground
Stephen Massimilla
How many brothers are planted in this world? Calf jacket and axle, in the land that wasn't their father's. Onions and sapphires in the mud. Traces of seizure in the soil. The exile enters, embattled old wolf. Oh forget the bristling thicket. Wander over scorched black earth because today's project is not the sniffing of rodent ribs, not these pickings in the twigs. Nor is he. Nor can skeletons dedicate poems to all the bones in this world—though it seems they ought to, understanding death. The nearly forgotten snow becomes crucial to touch. The life of any March ghost is a search for peace, for self- extension, as—well, take a memory that takes the night into itself: Hare-flocked moon, smoking past luminous husks. Some thoughts depend on who you are once you're gone.