Scott Ferry
Scott Ferry helps our veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. In former lives, he taught high school, managed aquatic centers, and practiced acupuncture. He has four books of poetry: The only thing that makes sense is to grow (Moon Tide, 2019), Mr. Rogers kills fruit flies (Main St. Rag, 2020), These Hands of Myrrh (Kelsay Books, 2021), and Sea of Marrow (Ethel Press, 2021). He has two books upcoming in 2022: fishmirror from Alien Buddha Press and skinless in the cereal aisle from Impspired Press. More of his work can be found @ ferrypoetry.com.
offal
once auras began glowing from everyone i knew i was either insane or
(my father had just died maybe this was grief bleaching over my sclera maybe i wasn’t)
once i could feel god i knew i should not speak about
(my life was crumbling my first teaching joba failure my purpose my)
once i could hear the dead i knew they were submerged in the
(it hasn’t changed it hasn’t changedi hold my family i hold my)
i try to bring some heliotrope through the gatei try to bring chrysanthemum skin through
(god doesn’t see these blisters flowering if i pretend god doesn’t exist if)
i offer a platter of chocolate liversi offer crisp entrails write recipes for
(my daughter asks me about ghosts i don’t want to scare her i)
i want to tell but the words don’t carry through the scalding the words can’t
( )
(my father had just died maybe this was grief bleaching over my sclera maybe i wasn’t)
once i could feel god i knew i should not speak about
(my life was crumbling my first teaching joba failure my purpose my)
once i could hear the dead i knew they were submerged in the
(it hasn’t changed it hasn’t changedi hold my family i hold my)
i try to bring some heliotrope through the gatei try to bring chrysanthemum skin through
(god doesn’t see these blisters flowering if i pretend god doesn’t exist if)
i offer a platter of chocolate liversi offer crisp entrails write recipes for
(my daughter asks me about ghosts i don’t want to scare her i)
i want to tell but the words don’t carry through the scalding the words can’t
( )
i can’t tell you
how to speak to your deadi can’t tell you how i speak to mine (i shouldn’t be writing this) the holy should stay holy(all is all is all is) yet if a timid child (who was once a grandmother) with abalone clothes steps closeenough to blow their floodname near your ear (dust sunswirling) you may wantto listen
ouroboros as a stuffed boy
my father makes me a puppet in his mirrori am meant to replace his lost youth
my youth lost my father now a puppet i don’t mean to perform for a mirror
i still try to replace for him even thoughhe cannot reflect cannot atone cannot puppet
i already feel i need to deserve to performa reflectionless puppet in a mirror
i still try to replace someone to please a god lost a puppet in the brimless sky
my wife keeps telling me i don’t need to deservethat the puppet and the boy and the son and the man
are alright as they are even lost even asleepeven crying even too scared of reflections
i hold up this puppet of my lost body the onewho is supposed to be loved even with seams ripped
i hold up but then i can’t deserve without performingin front of the godmirror thinking look at me father
how holy this pain
my youth lost my father now a puppet i don’t mean to perform for a mirror
i still try to replace for him even thoughhe cannot reflect cannot atone cannot puppet
i already feel i need to deserve to performa reflectionless puppet in a mirror
i still try to replace someone to please a god lost a puppet in the brimless sky
my wife keeps telling me i don’t need to deservethat the puppet and the boy and the son and the man
are alright as they are even lost even asleepeven crying even too scared of reflections
i hold up this puppet of my lost body the onewho is supposed to be loved even with seams ripped
i hold up but then i can’t deserve without performingin front of the godmirror thinking look at me father
how holy this pain
this was going to be a sonnet about the
mournful but hopeful call of the rooster next door which always transports me to predawn on guam the chickens roaming amidst heliotrope ironwood and orchid their procession of young skittering across the road their proud crimson combs and jowls slick in a new rain and all the humans still wrapped in our cocoons not knowing exactly where or who we are because the seaspray still obscures the sky and the red sails still carry us from the pearltoothed labyrinths of crete back into our hairy beastbodies but weren’t the sails supposed to be black or white the rooster crowed thrice that means we survived?my son begins to stir but my wife still eats dakos while a white egretta sings over knossos
when i was fifteen
i read seth speaks a book channeled from a discarnate spirit
who explained to us living entities that we had conflated our
realities from learned paradigms that our vision was mostly a
self-jettisoned hologram not based on the real structure of
matter but our prediction of what objects should look like
from what we had been taught and the words which attached
to joist horizon safety satisfaction marriage were airy puffs of dust
from 1950s schoolbooks and then the next thing that started
happening was the corners of my living room began to
buckle into oblong rhombi and all the frames began to
oscillate until i felt warmthick and disembodied like i could
zerp open a ziplock and just exist in several vantage points in
the room simultaneously the fireplace looking up the
chimney the sliding door looking out at the calico cat
sauntering along the fence up on the ceiling multi-eyed like a
spider but then i got scared i trembled in the open air i
snapped back to my dewey decimal notecards back to time
and straight lines and solid wood behind the drywall but i
allowed the new pools to fill around me fountains of
magnetic mercury lifting and falling through my form and it
felt reassuring that life was not dry inside the joints but
sloshing with chromosomal elixir extra nerves and vessels
coursing into the sticky web prehistoric antennae shooting
bendy straws into the full squirming sun
