By Dylan Willoughby
(Marsyas blow through us)
(become a song become song)
(to latch onto life its “little hours”)
(to sing to utter is to belong)
I awoke from the “procedure” a puzzled
Lazarus calling on the sweet
oboe while the anesthesia muzzled
anything I had to say for once for once
a silence overtook us and saying
would only break the words’ retreat
Lamentations we did well and often to
accompany the fear of “early
onset” the prize we never wanted the
legacy of haunt nearly as bad as
the thing itself the inescapable condition
Bow out and refuse nature’s course refute
the trajectory of forgetting all embrace
whatness and thisness before they escape
ghosts but lately come
O this word does not translate
across perception’s lines does
not illuminate our tethered binds (raising
the dead does not enter our minds) the
stars fled while we stargazing an
empty sky it seemed empty but for us
*“Ghosts but lately come” refers to Ovid Metamorphoses, Book III, trans. Mary M. Innes
Dylan Willoughby is a permanently disabled LGBTQIA+ poet, composer, music producer, and photographer, born in London, England, and currently living in Los Angeles, CA. Chester Creek Press has published three limited-edition chapbooks, illustrated by the painter Anthony Mastromatteo.
A note on the dedicatee: Dylan met Julie Hilden in the MFA program at Cornell University and they remained good friends until her untimely passing on March 17, 2018.