van gogh's ghost begins his resurrection piece by piece with a story about the boots

dear reader dearest little god of breath

if you say i weave my body

so i weave my body

into a flea market this needy grove

of copper rings & peacock feather hats

no hook should have to bear

you say so i do

buy two brown boots & because they're too stiff

i tug them up & slog alone

through green wheat in downpour

clubbed lashes tracing my fingers as i wonder

what outlasts sadness or rain

because that is all some do & all

i would do again & stepping past my door

laces dangling like glowworms’ ruthless silks

i wrench off my boots

watch them piss themselves at the hearth

& weep not for harrowed beauty

the floorboards drowning beneath it

say i become a billowed field of weeping

& i pour myself in two hands & paint

two used boots & carried in their wilted throats

like a seed from a sunflower's pit i drop

dewy from your lips in the shell of

this story or the other

where i buy a pistol

& hug the muzzle to my chest push

one thumb against the gun's one

bullet soldered to a single bone in my spine

whose name i have no breath to say

dear reader

dear god

forgive

boxed under a woven bed of ivy

on which a sparrow stomps

whistles like a wet log in a pyre

& loosens the tongue

of a down feather

my seventh thoracic vertebra

like the abandoned sketch that ruptured

my faith in preservation when it burned & broke

blackened scraps rafted toward

over the hearth & two slouched boots

it couldn't save an open door

rising out of your lungs

Tim Lynch has published with tenderness, yea, Connotation Press, Mead, APIARY & others. He has directed workshops for young writers through Rutgers University in Camden, NJ & conducts interviews for Tell Tell Poetry.