Scott Ferry
Sentences 130-141
130. I am leaping expectantly in the corner waiting for my turn to make the audience laugh.
131. My mouth is not open so I have to dance to gain favor from the seated shadows.
132. My dance is like a sped-up wish, a fish leaping into another torrent.
133. I think I am calm enough but my eyes blur into the film and the vulnerable spots scream.
134. I still speak into the camera although as a taut wire of voltages.
135. Each word I speak is a way to either let you in or push you out; gates and false entrances.
136. There are bones at the door and inside of my bones there are worms drinking marrow.
137. This is all a variation of a fake name; an entry march; a silent pose on a hidden stage.
138. When my son asks me to dance, I do; like a child without lines.
139. I have eaten myself and now I am ready to eat my family; to protect them.
140. The dance is not a prelude to suffering; but an unwrapping of shields in a field.
141. Birds open their throats and throw their songs into the thick wind.
Sentences 418-431
418. He holds onto his mother’s knees and says, “Remote control, grab daddy’s hand.”
419. Then my wife reaches out her arm to clinch mine like an automaton.
420. He orders, “Grab daddy’s arm, activate!” again she obeys.
421. We play a few more times until we tire of being machines for his amusement.
422. I wonder if that is my only function some days.
423. We cut up his meat for dinner with scissors; he says, “You are cutting my body!”
424. He says, “Inside are my bones and you cut them!” he devours the meat regardless.
425. Maybe the meat is his earlobe or his tongue but it was very pricey and delicious.
426. He yells a bit too loud, “I am broken I am broken I am broken!”
427. My wife puts her hand on his head and announces, “You are healed, you are whole!”
428. He believes it, and in this way continues to chew on the shared meat of the sacrificed.
429. It is so easy to be a servant and a healer and a beast sliced thinly and salted.
430. Power and identity are merely apparitions; we order and eat, kill and consume each other.
431. There is only a smear of blood left on our plates.
cremation
i was thinking what it would be like to take apart everything / how horrifying because what if i forget how to reassemble it all / my son loves to do this / unscrew the hose nozzle screw it back on / take out the batteries / put them back in / i was thinking how to take apart the scary things like a puzzle / put the pieces back together without the dark places without the holes / cover the missing pieces with amnesia / blank scrabble tiles / lies prayers omissions insertions / a puzzle of a nude body in the morning stepping on the wet grass / no ants or wind or other people / i was watering the roses when i thought this and knew water as neutral / a thickness to float on / then i see a huge swath of smoke choking the sky three houses down / i tell my wife to call 911 / and we see the flames dancing over the fences / the sirens come 30 seconds later as someone else already called / i guess one way to unite the unassembled parts is to burn them / a forced rapture / the limbs alight and alive / the water flooding in the alarms and garish costumes / the neighbors assembled around the burnt gates / murmuring to each other / did they survive? / how long did they stay alive before god took them? / there were no stretchers / i think what is left after fire? / bone fragments? / metal? / pieces of ourselves we could never forgive?
Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. He attributes his writing skill to listening to rain fall upwards from the bottom of a fictional aquarium. His most recent book, each imaginary arrow, is now available from Impspired Press. Upcoming in early 2024, his collaboration with the California poet Daniel McGinn called Fill Me With Birds will be published by Meat For Tea Press, as well as his book of prose poems Sapphires on the Graves from Glass Lyre Press. More of his work can be found at ferrypoetry.com.