perhappened mag
issue 5: LIGHTS OUT
sue nocturne
HEATH JOSEPH WOOTEN
after Suzanne Vega’s “Rusted Pipe”
Sound of crickets in which
I split the horizon open and see
what is left inside:
a bird with no tender
beat left in its heart. The measure of time
by your stride. An acorn pressed
into my bare foot.
The rules: we must run until we forget
our lungs. We must run to a place so deep
not even instinct could remember
the way.
An us in which the knife is the only instrument
sharp enough to cut our beginning from the vine.
Sound of crickets in which
I split the horizon open and see
what is left inside:
a bird with no tender
beat left in its heart. The measure of time
by your stride. An acorn pressed
into my bare foot.
The rules: we must run until we forget
our lungs. We must run to a place so deep
not even instinct could remember
the way.
An us in which the knife is the only instrument
sharp enough to cut our beginning from the vine.
|
The vine: a something that knows
movement as a deer— |
The beginning: a something of us founded
upon that movement— |
in which
when the fire is done breathing
we can ink through the vigil of no more
than starlight.
In the place we find the bird, we wash
its feathers until they shine beyond light. The beginning rots
and the vigil rots and the deer rots.
Without the deer we have no use of movement.
The vigil ends and
even the dark.
The bird
does not. The bird is a quiet and therefore
rests beyond the ending. That deep
place in which it is the only existence. The flicker
in the empty, the beak that cuts
the horizon like a knife.
Heath Joseph Wooten is an MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University. He is an avid collector of cassettes and other obsolescences, and you can find his work in or forthcoming from Lammergeier, EX/POST, [sub]liminal, and others.