Chelsea Dingman

Letter From the Dead to the Living

This morning, riding the train
past my childhood 

home, I am traveling the natural
lapsus of disease,
            by which I mean desire

-less fields and grasses
that lay dry
                        inside the soil. A kind of free
            -grace. Beyond longing, 

the address that allows the illness itself
to attain its own truth. Broken
geographies of blue 

-bonnets. The mind, fragmented
in the images. The green carpenter

bee’s nest falls
from the dead 

tree. Plums, apples, peaches—
even counter-memory is illusion now. A child’s bones
deemed too thick 

to break, too thin to saw. The mother
who endured a miracle
by falling apart 

after ten months in a bath, each
organ a dark
            hollow in the language— 

the train carrying me
now, both remedy 

& poison. Like that life I left to no
one—how violence
                        is also its beauty— 

the cry of the train
whistle against the pines. Rain
that became a reason 

someone had to die. The absent sun
falling through the fall 

sky. Even in heaven, I long for
heaven. Even here, desire is a wish
                        for home.

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Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, won the National Poetry Series (UGA Press, 2017). Her second book, through a small ghost, won The Georgia Poetry Prize (UGA Press, 2020). Her third collection, I, Divided, is forthcoming from LSU Press in the fall of 2023. She is also the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Alberta. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.