A Poem From The Year

“Hunger for Something” by Chase Twichell:

Sometimes I long to be the woodpile,

cut-apart trees soon to be smoke,

or even the smoke itself,

sinewy ghost of ash and air, going

wherever I want to, at least for a while.

Neither inside nor out,

neither lost nor home, no longer

a shape or a name, I’d pass through

all the broken windows of the world.

It’s not a wish for consciousness to end.

It’s not the appetite an army has

for its own emptying heart,

but a hunger to stand now and then

alone on the death-grounds,

where the dogs of the self are feeding.

Please consider supporting the work of The Poetry Society of America here.

(From Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been © 1998, 2010 by Chase Twichell. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Photo by Nick Harris)