& forgive me
for I cannot

tell you how
to begin

but here
is the body

like the urge
to pray—

your mouth
already gone.

& we never
said you: a boy

woman
man—only

the animal made
with two hands

& lost
in the field

waiting
for human life

to reenter
as if through

a door
broken—&

yet the dead
who love

you—who
are still

remembering
the touch

of blood-
warmed skin—

abandon you
like every

yesterday—
like this

single paradise
of every-

body’s silence
rusting day-

light into
the only dusk

we have
been made

to see.

—

Michael Wasson is the author of This American Ghost (YesYes Books, 2017), winner of the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Prize. His poems appear in American Poets, Drunken Boat, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Narrative, and Bettering American Poetry. He is nimíipuu from the Nez Perce Reservation and lives abroad.

—

Image: Joel Pilger