by Chase Ferree
I imagine depth where it isn’t—
a screen where a man
opens his mouth so wide
that it becomes a cavern
of flesh arced like a cathedral,
letting escape a sound so clear
it’s as though his larynx
captured the sound of a bell
after it’s rung, after someone
tells him, “that’s the explosion,
the flower bursting.” How we tend
to put sound in visual terms
glistening or effervescent.
I guess I want something beyond
the knowledge that glass
is ever falling, each pane older
than the last. Yet in the hour before
it sets there is so much the sun can do,
even from one stand of trees
to the next. I look up in those moments
at monumental clouds, wondering
how it might feel inside,
among the water, the light,
and the tender arrival of thunder.
Chase Ferree (he/him) is a teacher in Seattle. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Peripheries Journal, Horse Egg Literary, perhappened, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @freechasetoday.
Emerge Literary Journal 