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.