Conception
After, in the pigpen, my grandfather
dropped a lit cigarette into the straw.
They rushed the animals out as the roof
went up in smoke, embers whirling
in the dark like red leaves in autumn.
My grandmother stroked a sow’s ear
as the pen burned, unaware my mother
had begun the journey toward a life
inside her. Not even the creators know
what they’re creating. The short night.
The cries of a black-spotted swine.
Moonlight as it scatters in the thatch
and passes. Pleasure, yes. And mercy—
Yes. Humiliation. Though the marriage
was already on its way to failure,
maybe they could feel love’s afterglow
as they led the animals into the poplars,
backs to the felled pen and its fire.
Giovanni’s Voice
I made myself a room for you.
Brick by brick, I took apart the history
of my body and rebuilt it—
Took your absence
and removed it—
There was a window. The only
light that pierced it
was the steel of the Seine.
Every evening, cognac turned
our glasses gold. It licked our lips.
The mattress was too small for two.
Sometimes you came home
to me from other lovers—
I didn’t mind. What I wanted
was the coming home,
your skin, your sweat in darkness—
Night is a room.
The daylight troubled us.
I liked it best when I could hear
the hawthorn rasping at the panes,
a thin rain hissing—
A morning storm was night extended.
There was no sense in leaving.
When you disappeared, it baffled me,
it made me sick, the liquor
seared my insides,
my whole world distended
like a sunlit corpse—
On the table, you had set a glass
of ice, the brandy drained.
It left a wet and risen circle
where the oak had swollen.
I dried the ring.
Taking You to Idaho
Our friends say their vows
under a lattice archway
strung with Polaroids
and wildflowers.
The bride’s mother
has fixed the skull
of a doe to the arch’s apex,
its hollow sockets
bearing witness
like God’s reciprocal,
embodied and sightless.
It’s been a decade
since I’ve come home
in the summertime—
guests gather by the steep edge
of the field to point
their cameras at the rising
storm. Someone says
rain on a wedding day
means children in nine months
as she taps a photo
of black thunder
and the thunderheads, lit as if
from inside, both
by lightning and expending sun.
We need to capture
something in that distance,
to look inside the dark
our lives came from.
You and I—we need it
just as much as anybody else.
I hold up my phone
and draw you close,
your hair conspiring
with the wind to cover
half my face, and you
insist the angle’s light
erases us.
Despite ourselves,
we need the frame
to make up for our separateness,
to contain us
where our bodies fail.
You will never be as close
as I want you.
The bride has taken off
her shoes, veil dangling
from a nail in the arch.
Chris Ketchum is from Moscow, Idaho. He received an MFA from Vanderbilt University and is a doctoral candidate at Georgia State University. He is an editor of Beyond Bars, a literary magazine that publishes writing by justice-impacted writers.