four poems
by Liam Strong
black bear sighting
[if we didn’t run from our prey][if we wore scars like scars & not berries
for the plucking][if the summer would permit the tap water to stay
cold]
[beyond a mandible of doubt][all opportunity consumes a species of cost][do you remember what our mother looked like
her shuffling feet halls of grass hair yearning from fish][but for what] [to be of least concern . your untrimmed nails]
[sister taxa of an uncommon ancestor] [dialect with clawmark she says come
sleep]
[there is room in this hollow elm][the retch of her pantried salmon up by the ditch
fogged sun][pack of camels worn into our hides] [we hobble jagged toward
lighthouses of birdseed] . [if we listened to wind curling . through every dead corpse we pass][you would’ve
heard the blood howling within weeping . pines coyotes stomped moss][believe
nothing][if you have to believe . anything at all][even when killing is our only option]
message sent to the future
your haunted little wounds. the postcards we received. mountains folded in half. your sceneries with the light burrowed out. artery of the crease. freshwater omitted from moses’ hand. your dead wholesome tourism. you won’t remember this. & neither will we.
grandpa presents a PowerPoint on falling through ice
which i stop paying attention to roughly 14 seconds in. the thesis of course is that you’re a moron if you fall. duh. he scrapes whitefish scales off his gloves like nickels. furthermore in bullets:
- [you] + [are] + [a(n) expletive] ≠ a metaphor. it just is. sometimes we’ll refer to these as facts.
- the cornfield enjambed with snow. the shanks of pines, skin protecting weaker skin.
- my half-grandfather, the other one, his faith an xl beach shirt on a body barely five foot.
- four inches later a skull is augured into. wind breaks on his body, its orange chitin. i think i have nothing of his. his ghost with more meat on his bones.
- usually, the skim is not slippery until it is. slush beneath the tongue, preserved.
- citations needed for balmy winters, sprigs of hair growing back after a surgery shave. juice in the joints latched up like a gate.
{insert photo of me dying. i have died so many times, will die probably many more. it’s a footnote of life, the reel back into one’s eyes. beavers corralled firewood at the hinge between
lakes. if i went nearer, i would have set it on fire, like relief or revision. i need so little warmth anymore. jackets or coats, the difference between two hands, smaller than definitions. we can’t
fish for conclusion, can only say thank you, yes, my time is up, i don’t want to take any more of what’s yours. we don’t have to make a ritual of it, this wake without waves. he wouldn’t have
wanted that. duh. it’s an easy ask, to be that surface level. to want the kind of death that just kills you.}
pointers for planning a premature eulogy
get fuckin stoked brah best to avoid iterations of joy
etiquette is etiquette because of nuance, plinth in moderation
(don’t show the gun even beyond the third act)
if it’s bleeding it isn’t a wound cousin ___ might put on some music during reception at a ghost mall, program lined with copier gold the purge: cremation year
past tense modal verbs are most effective likely a lacking word count but
hey that’s fine scorched bridge arsonist relief soaked in stubborn stone compositional rhetoric might suggest
minimal summary & response which feels like sharing a grafted
piece of something that doesn’t belong to us
e.g. titling the service a celebration as if to say
please, unfold
your fingers, & dance there are fewer days every day
fuck it
Photo of Liam Strong
BIO: Liam Strong (they/them) is a disembodied genderless question mark and the author of three chapbooks. They died in 2020 and have been writing ever since. Find them on Instagram: @beanbie666. https://linktr.ee/liamstrong666