Scott Ferry

i imagine the dead waiting in line

to see their loved ones like visitation day
at a prison but before they can come through each

gated door they have to gain solidity like eating 
a bag of dehydrated skin cells but the lightbody

doesn’t hold the dust and it sweeps out of their feet
like sand so they have to swallow swollen leeches 

full of blood they have to remember the heaviness
of a body the swirl of the tongue around diphthongs

and half-truths they have to recall how to hurt
how to speak in layers of hurt through fear

and awkward silences they have to remember your name
or remember how you remember them so they can

slide into that image pixelated in a cerebral neuron
or that feeling of laughter you both had 

when you both forgot, you were going to die
when the burning of a candle or the taste of grief

hadn’t hit yet and when they get up to the window
you will be half asleep unguarded and free

they will slip into the room and pretend to speak
but it will come out as fragrance cinnamon a half-

submerged kiss a muffled heart piano
in the keys between breaths

i don’t believe in hell

but i know the father who shoots
his children while they sleep

to rip the most precious things
away from his ex-wife

in a boil of vengeance
but then looking for an escape

sees none but the same
flat clank of the hammer 

on the firing pin
against his weeping temple

i know he will not go to the same
place as his children

to the instant embrace of great 
grandmothers and lost aunts

no he will find himself naked
in a room of mirrors

and every time he will try to look away
more blood on pillows more peaceful eyes

extinguished without warmth or warning
just his shaking hand the gun

now glued on his millipede 
skin

sleep in the mountains of honey and smoke

as i fall asleep i think of the man who accidentally rolled over onto his baby in his bed and smothered the small breath  / he told me his story after he had electroconvulsive therapy after the seizures he was at peace and his wife would bring his new baby when welcoming him / i think how does one come back from that dark-smoked confinement with two working hands? the new baby would not replace the sweetness of the milkbreath the living babe calm and breathing moments before the larger sleep slid over the honeyed moon /  the wife can forgive but can one forgive the unconscious body? how it rolls without eyes like a shakeless convulsion? i don't know and now i can't sleep / some places are too displaced a bone fractured and never set back a name which can never be unlearned

 

 

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN. His seventh book of poetry, The Long Blade of Days Ahead, is now available from Impspired Press. You can read more at ferrypoetry.com.