After Arthur Sze
Here, the first Ralph leaves his skin
clinging to the cinder block wall.
Here, Ralph hangs his ghost by the mouth
from between the barn rafters.
Here, a six-foot scrim rasps with a paper tongue.
Here emptiness sways above
the dust motes with a tapered tail.
Here unspools the skein of muscle
from its punctured bubble wrap.
Here, eyes shed their orbs with the crepe of the whole.
Here, husks plaster the joist-wedged jugs
with last century’s forgetting.
Here bitters the gin and the Ralphs
that pull their hosts inside-out.
Here, outnumbered, we mind the local customs.
Here we stop heeding each scrape,
pause for the swallowed hush after.
Here we become Ralphs among Ralphs:
black pearls strung on knotted rope.
Here we echo in the eaves, cave in
with the cobwebbed wasp nest.
Here we empty every kink and curve
to the ground again.
Here we drag the twisting mass into the sun.
Dawn Manning is the author of Postcards from the Dead Letter Office. Honors for her work include the Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, the San Miguel Writers’ Poetry Prize, the Edith Garlow Poetry Prize, and being named a Mona Van Duyn Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Ecotone, Prairie Schooner, and other literary journals. She resides in the former tollhouse of a covered bridge where she writes, consults, conjures, and metalsmiths. Find her at dawnmanning.com.