Poem for the Body Found Nearby by Chera Hammons
I.
Maybe you were a bad one.
Maybe you had this one coming.
Maybe you were only alone,
and that's why no one missed you.
Maybe there is a report to acknowledge your loss,
but the math of the missing hasn't been done yet.
Today we are only guessing how much you gave
to those tall weeds, too far off the road for the county to mow.
They say that it will take months to find out.
Until then, our sympathy belongs to the dead.
And to ourselves, who deserve to know that we are passing ghosts
as we flaunt our brilliant and worrisome lives.
II.
We want to know you mattered.
So many people think you might belong to them
that they arrive one by one, though no one asked them to come.
A mother goes under the yellow tape to see
if there is anything she recognizes:
a button, a ring, a shoe. The spine of a wallet.
Our sympathy goes to the living.
Men in uniform comb the ground with their gloves.
They look for your name and other imprints
of the body we made transparent for over a year.
You only tell us what we already know:
Someone will always teach us what loss is like.
Someone will always teach us how to grieve.
III.
Some light is wrong for taking pictures in.
A good photographer might say not to frame the sunset.
Turn instead to catch the shadows— that's where the interest lies,
the tall dark pillars that slant away from it
and cleave the landscape to the deepening horizon.
In this disarming flatness, this expanse of wind,
every building from miles away slants back,
every metal tower leans, the colt stands
on its unclosed knees and reaches the edge of darkness,
and the hawks that shift and tremble in the thermals
melt over the silencing earth.
Even the buzzards here don't speak to anyone.
You, too, know what it is like to wander in emptiness
looking for artifacts. Whose last words
haven't eventually become I loved someone?
A body can hide in this ochre plain,
soft and still, for months while its stories unravel.
They are gathering now the skull, the shoes,
locking hands to comb the ditches.
The only news we hear is that there is nothing new.
The mirror behind the lens lifts so briefly
to let the light through.
If someone asks you, Am I a good person?
say Yes. No one will ask it twice.
We fumble in the dusk, where it is hard to see each other.
This is the kind of light in which we must hurry.
Our sight comes in flashes and blurs,
shapes that seem familiar.
Beside that quiet congregation of trees,
someone starts to catalog the bones.
Maybe you were a bad one.
Maybe you had this one coming.
Maybe you were only alone,
and that's why no one missed you.
Maybe there is a report to acknowledge your loss,
but the math of the missing hasn't been done yet.
Today we are only guessing how much you gave
to those tall weeds, too far off the road for the county to mow.
They say that it will take months to find out.
Until then, our sympathy belongs to the dead.
And to ourselves, who deserve to know that we are passing ghosts
as we flaunt our brilliant and worrisome lives.
II.
We want to know you mattered.
So many people think you might belong to them
that they arrive one by one, though no one asked them to come.
A mother goes under the yellow tape to see
if there is anything she recognizes:
a button, a ring, a shoe. The spine of a wallet.
Our sympathy goes to the living.
Men in uniform comb the ground with their gloves.
They look for your name and other imprints
of the body we made transparent for over a year.
You only tell us what we already know:
Someone will always teach us what loss is like.
Someone will always teach us how to grieve.
III.
Some light is wrong for taking pictures in.
A good photographer might say not to frame the sunset.
Turn instead to catch the shadows— that's where the interest lies,
the tall dark pillars that slant away from it
and cleave the landscape to the deepening horizon.
In this disarming flatness, this expanse of wind,
every building from miles away slants back,
every metal tower leans, the colt stands
on its unclosed knees and reaches the edge of darkness,
and the hawks that shift and tremble in the thermals
melt over the silencing earth.
Even the buzzards here don't speak to anyone.
You, too, know what it is like to wander in emptiness
looking for artifacts. Whose last words
haven't eventually become I loved someone?
A body can hide in this ochre plain,
soft and still, for months while its stories unravel.
They are gathering now the skull, the shoes,
locking hands to comb the ditches.
The only news we hear is that there is nothing new.
The mirror behind the lens lifts so briefly
to let the light through.
If someone asks you, Am I a good person?
say Yes. No one will ask it twice.
We fumble in the dusk, where it is hard to see each other.
This is the kind of light in which we must hurry.
Our sight comes in flashes and blurs,
shapes that seem familiar.
Beside that quiet congregation of trees,
someone starts to catalog the bones.
Chera Hammons is the Writer-in-Residence at West Texas A&M University. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Foundry, Rattle, Ruminate, Tar River, THRUSH, Tupelo Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is a winner of the 2017 PEN Southwest Book Award for Poetry and nominee for 2018 Best of the Net. Forthcoming books include a volume of poetry through Sundress Publications and a novel through Torrey House Press. She lives in Amarillo, TX.
Julia Forrest is a Brooklyn based artist. She works strictly in film and prints in a darkroom she built within her apartment. Her own art has always been her top priority in life and in this digital world, she will continue to work with old processing. Anything can simply be done in photoshop, she prefers to take the camera, a tool of showing reality, and experiment with what she can do in front of the lens. Julia is currently working as a teaching artist at the Brooklyn Museum, Medgar Evers College, USDAN Art Center and Lehigh University. As an instructor, she thinks it is important to understand that a person can constantly stretch and push the boundaries of their ideas with whatever medium of art they choose. Her goal is for her audience to not only enjoy learning about photography, but to see the world in an entirely new way and continue to develop a future interest in the arts. You can find her at her WEBSITE and on instagram: @Juliajuliaajuliaa