Michael Delp

Late Night Full Moon Deck Sentence:

You call in ghosts this way: full moon, low fire and the coals speaking that language found inside the earth, the dust circles, collects into the ghost bodies of three beloved dogs, the ghosts of my mother and a grandfather dead from a shotgun he jammed home to his stomach, suicide and ashes mixing in the wind and the words not heard before this night when the river seems to turn over, sing itself into ancient bends and eddies, the mind a sump, waiting to wake … the air is filled with the smoke of burning tongues, every crow for miles hunched into their blackening dreams, so I spit each word I remember of the lives I loved into a widening maelstrom, the woods revolving around me, and those ghost dogs, just now preparing to wade in, offer rescue, my mother and grandfather already on the bank, tending a fire where every possible offering has been given up for burning.