Apophatic
By Carrie George
After Dan Beachy-Quick
Nothing sounds like a bullet nothing
revs like an engine of a car in summer
when roads turn to glue crowding traffic
stopped in dotted lines in weave-work
embroidered pillows fill trash bags
on the unmarked porch without
the bench no more sneaking cigarettes
nothing smells in the front yard
flowers grow sideways flowers grow
brown before they’re even old
nothing sprouts young anymore not
since the bees died not since boys
measured their hands against their
fathers’ what do you make of the space
left for a son left to grow what becomes
of limbs at their highest potential
no one in my family has ever climbed
a mountain no one I know has ever
touched sand does a rifle still sound
underwater can a car drive through
a hailstorm is a body only a casualty
if its been through a war nothing
sounds like a flat line like a folded flag
once a widow dabs her eyes with a
handkerchief the grief is gone
and the body is too.