Long strands of light
cling to the grass
feeding memory a fruit
that weaves fabric
between roots and the earth
between each fading footstep
and the slowly turning sky
a fabric that fills fading days
with sunlight and waves

Smoke is holding its shadow
inside its stomach where
it laughs and disappears
the wind is not afraid
of the sky and bites into
the stomach of smoke
smoke uses its shadow
like a tail to keep from falling
the sky has turned its back
but still pulls the smoke
up off the world
by its shoulders

Words are dying
Words are chewing
through the walls of my home
so that one room spills
into another like a drought
spilling into a drought
Words are chewing
 while floods perch on top
of the door frames
and are afraid to step on the floor
without wiping their feet

www.saharagray.com

Ben Judson is featured in Edition: Lunacy

Chapter 1
Any Longer

Because of the eye the hand fell
apart into countless waves
which pushed the fingers of the sun back and forth
along the skin until the skin couldn’t
any longer
contain life or keep out the world

Chapter 2
Again One More Time

The night is losing its hair again
the rain is coming
in a rhythm as unsteady
as these plants trying
again one more time
to make the dead remember
that light has a face

Chapter 3
After All

After all the river could swallow us
not whole but bit by bit
like the stones beneath our feet

but if instead it swallowed the breath
between us we could see
each other without light without
eyes that build distance upon drought
without words that push us from the earth
from the froth and the spray of weight

after all the river is neither earth
nor sky but their violent
marriage at our feet

Chapter 4
A false Sky

A river hides the earth
beneath a false sky
composed of shifting edges
and shattered light
the earth is glad to be free

but the sky resents
being its mask
any longer
contain life or keep out the world

We are building footsteps
 one by one out of
what we are not
and feeding them to the earth
she asks us where we learned of
what we are not made of
we say from her
or from the clouds we
are not sure
she takes our footsteps
and gives us back our names
our secret mouths

The world is all alone
and I want to talk to it but
silence flows out of me
and drowns everything
like a net of fish
pushing over a stone
or like the kind of blood
that plucks the stars out of the sky
and dissolves them
waiting for breath to wring it out
flooding the lungs
filling the world
like a moon that has lost its mind