Poetry

Freeze-Dried Memories of Death Wrapped in Barbed Wire Snowflakes

Icy knives cutting sky between the lines

Photo by Author

Snowflakes melt
into lines of barbed wire,
across the airplane window,
but we don’t have to travel
far to find
icy knives
cutting sky
between the lines;
these stories
are lost
under the permafrost
of the Art District.

He saw the blood
running down
cotton fibers
like barbed wire
stretching over
each moment,
sinking deep
into the crevasse
of his lizard brain,
slicing every thought
cut clean,
until somebody
makes sense
of this slush
of twisted
fingers frozen,
but still pointing
at the sky,
still pointing
at each other.

Scrawling clouds
spell the name
of another
of God’s children
lost on camera
a year or so ago;
buried under
the wrong name
marked in marble,
to please the blood
family allowed past
the graveyard gate.

A list of relatives
poured out
of mother’s mouth
on a foggy
holiday morning,
all the dead piling
into their zoom graves
like credits dripping
down the glass screen
of the retirement
home’s front desk.