“to write against the ghost”

                        –Susan Howe

I am simply more nothing

to be overlooked, an absence

to be removed, like a hole

filled with fresh corpses,

then coyly landscaped

into an ubiquitous green calm,

easily assuaged and forgotten.

I speak in simple tongues

without need of translation:

such is my metaphor,

eraser crumbs brushed

aside without consequence.

Lost in the muck of language,

I claw across my margins’

sharp fractal edges, then fade.

(April 3, 2018)