and a face forgets how to go blank, trapped in a permanent facsimile.
Author: Dave Bonta
I live in an Appalachian hollow in the Juniata watershed of central Pennsylvania, and spend a great deal of time walking in the woods. My books of poetry include FAILED STATE: HAIBUN, ICE MOUNTAIN: AN ELEGY, BREAKDOWN: BANJO POEMS, and ODES TO TOOLS.
ridgetop forest
the moss grows fat
on the milk of clouds
winter fog
bare branches turn
green again
A mountain is a mountain
not because of its height in absolute terms but because of its distance. It stands apart—but also in the way. Its roots go deep.
I was lost
and didn’t know it. I had a cellphone-shaped hole in my heart.
A road is a blankness,
a life sentence for its strip of land. But sometimes it glows, livid as a scar.
Sound travels more slowly in the cold.
Over the next four years, some words may freeze before they leave our mouths.
that faint overlay
on every cellphone photo—
my own face
Seasoned, we say,
as if time and weather were condiments.
In penmanship class,
time itself was looped, recursive, as my vision blurred and fingers cramped around the cursèd pen.
boulder field in snow
its only other crop
besides lichen
Ribcage:
simply because of that word, I have always thought of my insides as a jail.
