Tema Stauffer, Mimosa Branches, Sparta Highway, Georgia, 2019 (Artist Website)
Photograph
Image courtesy of Tracey Morgan Gallery
a field outside a bus window
in rural italy, grass marked
with odd flattenings, like horses
had lain down
a field in oregon
where i drank half a bottle of wine
on a friend’s birthday, green
label that read prophecy
a field in another
dimension where i was both inside
the field and watching myself from
a dirt path on the edge. i grew more
and more distant until i vanished,
or glitched back into myself
from behind
a field at sunset,
a field that was sunset, deepening,
bouquet into bruise, goblin sky
with a pink-black paunch
i prayed
to nothing for a field that would absorb
my body, take me like medicine,
as if pain could be ended
that simply
yes, i thought, a field was coming
for me across the long expanse
of stars. it would unfurl for me
like a tongue
a bag on my shoulder
and inside, a blanket and
a hardboiled egg
the longer i looked,
the bigger the field would grow, until
there’d be nothing else
horses thundering
from every hole in my head