The Pantry Shelf

Unnameable

she lives
the memory
her father’s hands
pressed into the small
of her back, legs splayed like peels
the smell of sweat, courier
and rye

Clinker Ash

you stood under a hovel of rain
a child’s roughed up knees
pressed into the spar of your chest
storm clouds like phantoms
a childhood gray as clinker ash

Dirge Wood

hymnal wood rotted down to skeletal post
chiseling latch screws from ply-timber, tallness lines
penciled in level doorframes, they say he was much taller then
the crown of his head touching the edge of the pantry shelf