top of page

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

  • Tim Lynch
  • Nov 24, 2018
  • 2 min read

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.


Comments


Puerto del Sol is funded by New Mexico State University and the Mercedes Delos Jacobs Fund, and designed and operated by the MFA in Creative Writing program.

bottom of page