And the dead will come, even as you turn hesitantly towards the lightness of air. The dead will come when you turn abruptly away, wispy threads of hair billowing slightly behind, overtaken by grayness. And how will you greet this vision as you look into its dark corners, its rectangular protrusions of gray squares? Will you see my reflection, or will I see yours? The sigh that has become my life will feel relief,

The wreckage of the season lies in its leftovers. Brown leaves with edges curled and yellow leaves spotted with black circles cast shadows in puddles adorned with curves of oil slicks spilled from cars on this country road’s one pothole. The brilliant reds from gum and oak now lie forlorn …

Moss covered angular rocks jut from the earth, bathed in sunlight, dwarfed by a tower of sandstone. At times, the trail seems like a walk down 5th Avenue, along towering facades housing mice on treadmills, Not solid and staid like this monolithic mass. Man’s shadow leaves no trail of perpetuity like Earth’s birth canal, pushing out carved mountains that at once terrify and mystify shrunken people who can only photograph

My youthful myths were invented at my mother’s knee and St. Catherine’s, a conceived, delivered temple for ghosts who took of the bread in their ceremony of the dead and conformed to ceramic monuments with a list of saints that read Linus, Cletus, Clement, and Sixtus. Mea culpa. My moment…

Before the orange ball of fire hides behind trees in the cemetery, Long Mountain, and the Blue Ridge, it lights up the peonies, wisteria, the stone sentinels, and farmlands carved into the hillside to the east, putting its positive glow on the petty worries of the day, the unfulfilled longings and wasted hours while the glow inside from the television highlights the riots, the terror, and the unrest —

The curve of the lens bends the ray of light as it shifts to the delicate strand of web on the leaf. Brown edges betray the gold grandeur of autumn illuminated by the morning sun that quickly climbs to the top of Dickie Ridge only to move in an arc that hides the leaf’s glory, leaving it in silent splendor.

Leaving Newark Behind The musty smell of moisture-laden Cotton and wool upholstery In 50s sedans Produces an irrational Revulsion… Perhaps it was the Motion sickness while Listening to “Three Little Fishies” Playing on the radio, The smoke from My parents’ L&M’s, and My father’s press and release Of the gas pedal again and…

Taylor Cherefko 2/22/09–10/3/22 The day lilies are almost In bloom, struggling for A spot in the sun next To the cattails along the small Rivulet of water that Divides grasses, tall And thick from Rainstorms. The front yard is dotted With colorful frames that House swarms of bees And wild flower honey, Thick and sweet on the tongue. This is the meeting place Where friends gather To ascend Smith Run Road,

Poetry is a physical, invisible source of light that peeks from holes inside of us; it is a voice for the physicality of eyes and fingers and a product of the process of healing from little scars and gaping eyes and ears of small children. A “journey of a nervous impulse,” it is an untreated spasm sifted in neurotic channels and recorded in words that flip Webster’s dictionary, leaving it to wander