Poetry: Selections from Scott Ferry
in the end there is only me and a demon television
i stand at the front of the class
i have lips and strawberry eyelids
i can function here a joke a small lie
here i write and glow
i copy the hope and hope to rise
i have to bring the voices
into the waking light
i remember watching this documentary
on kirlian photography
when i was 8 or so
they took an electromagnetic
image of a leaf
and then cut off a section of it
shot another photo
and the second picture showed the mass
missing but the warm lightning
surrounding the amputation
still brilliant and connecting
the whole body in a string
of light
i didn’t know what to do with
this information which poured
out of the television
like a long lost song
i just knew it showed the grace
of our ghosts
even if broken still glorious
even if absent still
singing
poem written with eyes closed
flickers of light like a jesus face in a window
face of light the rest dark plumbing
pipes and wires in the walls of the body
not a bird but a cough braying in my throat
after the flu when i lie down i cough as if possessed
my son shines a light in my face like a priest
like a doctor forgiving the illness of age
he checks all of my openings with a flash
a night diver seeking gold in a drowned cathedral
he says you try and i impersonate a healer
then i tell him it is time to close his eyes
and i hear the pipes and wires of his body
reach toward the last flicker of light and curl
into a deep filamented shadow of blood orange
i see the window and him inside
his enclosures but the ghosts trickle
through his walls like birds
and he breathes a tide
through a poem
blind as
god
Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. His collaboration with Lillian Necakov and Lauren Scharhag Midnight Glossolalia is now available from Meat For Tea Press.
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