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Keith T. Fancher
The Longer Dead
for our neighbors
It’s living in a ruin,
in the pooling shadows
of the hero stones.
Scree at the feet of the big sky
houses, frozen mid-step
over the hills, tangled
in each other’s bones and
ageless, still aging —
bridges to verb every shore,
to carry life — a bird’s nest
where the brain should be
and every week the swarming
pressures of routine
maintenance: workers like shadow-
shapes along the balconies,
nourishing shocks of purple
flower. Scraping birdshit
from the jawlines of former beasts.
There’s a definite pulse.
Like a wind beneath the cellar door
shaking the dead alive
among the bones of the longer dead.
About the writer:
Keith T. Fancher was born in the California redwoods and raised in the Blue Ridge foothills. He holds a BS in computer science and an MA in film studies, which are no help at all when publishing poetry. He lives in San Francisco. Explore Fancher’s other works on O:JA&L, “Mendonoma” and “Kid Stuff.”
Image: Town and Hills by Rinaldo Cuneo (1877-1939). Oil on canvas. 20 x 24 inches. 1937. Public domain.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation supporting writers and artists worldwide.
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