Scott Ferry

azithromycin

can’t fall asleep because the dryer clanks / every spine a back-dropped bomb / skeletal and brass / doorknobs opening / ghost steps on my broken body / earlier tonight i read my son the halloween book / and i get him to pronounce dia de los muertos / he repeats it into the air like a game of telephone / it comes out delo smelltoes / and then i grab his foot and sniff it / it doesn’t smell i say / but he wants to finish the book / he wants to say muertos again / he wants to say the word himself / death coming out of his new mouth / he just got over strep throat / had a fever for two days reddening and glazing in his own fire / the scarlet rash over his buttocks / his airway swelling shut / after two doses of antibiotics his young bones dance up our bodies like ladders / he jumps and climbs again / to think his mouth was so full of fire that it almost cauterized into white ash / now he wants to say muertos out of that thin opening / and every time the dryer tumbles it is him getting up out of bed /my doorknob slowly turning / telling me he hurts / that needs medicine / but he is asleep / these are ghosts fevering my script / this is the horror of a father listening to his child groan / this is what lifts me unbodied to the page to write / my throat full of false flames / my fingers full of meddling bones

 

scattering

sometimes i listen to the voice which prods at me / it says go outside / so i put down a pair of shorts i am folding and go out though the sliding door to the back yard where if i stand at the far north edge of the deck i can see the sunset over the olympic mountains / the clouds mirror the red of the sun which is no longer visible / the sun is red because of rayleigh scattering / because the sun is farther away the short wavelengths of blue and violet cannot make it all the way to me but the longer-wavelength red does / the air is a river of coral / the first blood and the last blood / the waves stretch into the clouds overhead / opaque bodies / light in roads and roots and currents / i call my daughter to come out and see / she opens her mouth in wonder / says it looks just like a painting / pointing to the distant peaks beyond the trees / to the open lungs of the sky / to the thunderstorms off to the south gathering ochre on their billowing limbs / take a picture she says and i do / she says i wish the camera could catch the real color it never does / i show her the photos / she is right / see not the same she says and runs back inside to her cartoon on a screen / i have not captured anything here / nor made anything mean anything besides what it already meant / some days it is enough to witness / some days it is enough to listen and follow what speaks under the visible / some days i am too tired for alchemy

clay

my son rushes up to the lake / grasps a clump of sand and throws it into the water / stands there waiting for something to happen / just a tiny ripple eddying back into the sky’s mirror / he does it again this time with two fistfuls / the expectant stance / a flicker and a silence / i think this is how we test our power against god / this is how we pray into the reflection which propagates endlessly / the image throwing sparks into itself / the fire zipping into double helixes / the gifts of our hands swallowed and recorded / the fingers clawing at the ground / pants wet / mouth slightly open / the water the whole of the light / adoro te devote / these bare shadows / chanting themselves to sleep

 

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. His latest book each imaginary arrow is now available from Impspired Press. More of his work can be found @ferrypoetry.com.