Celeste Rose Wood
Celeste Rose Wood lives in a village near a metropolis. She has an MFA from Manhattanville College and her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Scoundrel Time, great weather for MEDIA, and other locations.
The Lives of Lawns and Porchlights
I’m holding her hands, walking backwardtoward the bathroom, and I think
of animals for whom the way a humanstands is upside down. And I think,
if when a person dies with their mind intacta ghost is born, what of the person – what of my mother – for whom the brain is stilla flood of blood and dendrites in the process of being
eaten, as any forest is eaten? What of the onewho – what of my mother – already cannot
speak the way they spoke in life,though they are alive – though she’s alive?
I think, it would be like talkingto someone at their tombstone,
our own minds fill in answers with echoes and the lisps
of breeze on leaf. Now out the window, I see
the neighbor’s lavender is purple gray and fartheraway there’s ivy turning purple too, but darker,
while the lives of lawns and porchlightsburn and fade.
of animals for whom the way a humanstands is upside down. And I think,
if when a person dies with their mind intacta ghost is born, what of the person – what of my mother – for whom the brain is stilla flood of blood and dendrites in the process of being
eaten, as any forest is eaten? What of the onewho – what of my mother – already cannot
speak the way they spoke in life,though they are alive – though she’s alive?
I think, it would be like talkingto someone at their tombstone,
our own minds fill in answers with echoes and the lisps
of breeze on leaf. Now out the window, I see
the neighbor’s lavender is purple gray and fartheraway there’s ivy turning purple too, but darker,
while the lives of lawns and porchlightsburn and fade.
