Solid Quarter

Visit Trembling Pillow Press for poetry books, broadsides, chapbooks, and Solid Quarter Magazine.

Visit New Orleans Poetry Fest for the annual 4 day poetry festival directed by Bill Lavender and Megan Burns.

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Monday, April 12, 2021

Ghost Birthdays

 Ghost Birthdays

For Dylan Burns, 1985-2014


No matter what it is, there is nothing that cannot be done.

-The Book of the Samurai


you are waiting in a field

you don’t know who you are waiting for

but you know 

   when they arrive   the wholeness of your life

         will bloom

 

let me tell you what i’ve collected here: suicide

      is not the choice to die

but the power to shape the days of those who love

you, in ways irreparable

& what we take from abandon 

            lives on in us 

 

the weight of the world is grief 

       we cart around 

                                       loose nets of drawn time, we dip in 

cast as stars across the universe

         to sing sibling 

from the crux of design  the threads that carry 

 

us                never far 

 

travel inside the auto carriers of traversed city, my love, for

ever is a word we pull up on the tongue without context

 

so much here convinces you to survive you must be hard 

but this softness of our feral hearts, that drumming sound

ancient as the rock that floats us, this creature aspect 

of open your palm and grasp what is given 

this is how you swim

the length of any river in your passing: you take in

and you take in, the light bouncing off the surface blinding

& you, a miracle told into the story, without end