wood

by
Evan Thurman
split open acorns and folded over bottle caps shine the same in afternoon over light | mushroom feathered fell logs | six bodies in a five seat car see three cities in two days | dull rounded ache, hold it like an apple | we are allergic to the pesticides not to the flesh | cut me a piece with your father’s knife, cut away from the body, now, cut towards the soul | you can be at peace or with peace, or yes, in pieces | sugar-sap lips sticking, juice down the divots of your lips, dear, smile with your mouth full and i’ll smile with you | we are weather-warped and split down the middle | lichen and mulch and moth-holes, lover, our tongues flicker, myth-driven, and our bodies bleed snake’s blood | we are gut-gotten, we must keep our sacrifices to ourselves keep our penance to the land, keep peeling the bark off of our skin | bare hide |
we are scared of ourselves, although we are tender and soft | we carve niches for ourselves, and statues out of cliffs | we are simple creatures with deep notes, we are nobody in the face of only ourselves | we are human because we hold things, tools and conversations | we form connections and interweave them | we build nets | we grow and tighten, form into sieves and the water runs through us, filtered clean and cool | there comes a day where we come into ourselves and we are a wooden bowl, carved by many hands and sanded supple by experience | then, simply then, we can dip our always-hands into the pitched-black shocking-cold white-hot root-silver acorn-gold grief-ether that sits spine-straight and hearth-deep in the moss-and-stone-lined well that you keep your ghosts in | there is no spite in
this water | when you are ready to drink it, it will run right through you, brisk and centered | there is no shame in this water | you need not yet feel forged nor wood-wrought | you need not to fear misplacing your bowl for a day or even years, for it will be in your hands when you need it, when you lie tired and thirsty | when the day comes that your bowl splits, by ax or by time, your body will return to this bountiful land and beautiful firmament | you will hold us up if only for a moment longer | we will gaze up at your spirit as it returns to the stars.

Evan Thurman is a poet from Brooklyn. They are currently studying writing at Clark University. They have been previously published in Beacon Ink, Student Voices Magazine, and have work forthcoming in Strapped Magazine.

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