One Poem by Leif Wood

Artery¹

blood turns into sorrow turns into birds turns into fall turns into spring turns into cold turns into sweat turns into wool² turns into doors turns into full turns into me turns into cool turns into ways turns into dirt turns into crocus³ turns into parents turns into torrents turns into figures turns into drops turns into pain turns into nails turns into same turns into ash turns into urns turns into fir turns into ploys turns into grapes turns into hell turns into nape⁴ turns into salt⁵ turns into woe turns into wounds turns into sew turns into blood

¹ The body is only transformation. It recites, relives, recapitulates the liquid of the world. It is out of the deep sea the true technology comes and forms my viscose self.
 
² It’s all so easy in the humid wearing that old hair shirt you sent me in a care package along with oranges and some perspective. Walk up the hill. See the well. Endless wishes about fists plague my indifference.
 
³ Flowers imply a pool; images on images of age reflected in my mother’s eyes; a simple twinkle; infinite diamond mirrors on which to stand.
 
⁴ The noise of your love is toothless. The teeth meet my blood. The blood on the object. The object a clock. The blood a tongue. It’s the strangeness that gets me, really. The quietest ebb. The constancy of noise.
 
⁵ It all starts in the mouth.

Leif Wood is a recent graduate of Columbia University. His work has previously been published in Quarto. He enjoys trees, bees, and other things that rhyme.

Header photo by Hlib Shabashnyi, courtesy Shutterstock.