by Seth Jani
Transmogrification
The color of bones
Under the streambed’s
Filmy water
Are like strange fish
Darting out of view.
Black. Incandescent.
Red as silt or longing.
All of them marking the place
Where something has been forgot.
The unnoticed alchemy of matter
Dissolving into spirit.
What becomes of missing persons
when the mosses have their way.
Harvest Gods
After impressions exit the body
There is a cold wire that draws
Us through,
Energies that leaves us haunted
The way snow falls on an empty field
In a place where bones were found,
Where a girl’s truncated life slipped
Out of her, one more gift for the harvest,
For the always wounded God.
After impressions, there is only
The texture of having been
A resident, an abiding force
Quietly pushing dahlias out of soil.
The reason we hear the wind
And suspect a secret presence
Watching from the shore.
Albatross
Around his neck, the days
Were crushed calcium.
He wore them the way
A drowned man wears
A necklace of deep fish.
Sitting with his face averted,
The weight of those white bones
Made his whole life
Heavy as the sea.
Seth Jani currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven Circle Press (www.sevencirclepress.com). His own work has been published widely in such places as The Chiron Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, VAYAVYA, Gingerbread House, Gravel and Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com.
Boned 