Lisa Compo

Postscript

I can hear every breath
in this place, and I feel sorry
for the tintype spirits left
as nameless. I can smell the brackish
water, tannin tinted—a sepia
and sulfuric scent. That’s why
they become footsteps
here. Bones left at roots,
animal messages and all the unrest
in one small tooth. It means to tell me
someone else’s future, pressed
and faded as an autumnal leaf—gone. So,
I stop. The bats snag
dragonflies, cicadas—all the noises
I imagine this letter to feel
like. Swift, empty—
how I always take static
and hear a message from it.

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Lisa Compo is an MFA candidate at UNC-Greensboro. She has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: The Journal, Rhino, Puerto del Sol, Sugar House Review, Cimarron Review and elsewhere.