Sing, Unburied, Sing

by Jesmyn Ward

a foretaste of the damnation that will suffuse the air in the summer,

I am a great baby,

To get high. To see Given again.

smell the horror and grief in it, all of it distilled to one pungent syllable.

“I can’t,” I say, and there are so many other words behind that.

Given’s second leaving.

She mile metaphor question

That if I ask, he will go.

Simile - extended

We hold hands and pretend at forgetting.

waking me up with a punch to the back,

both of them fish-thin, slender as two gray sardines, packed just as tight.

Simile - meth abusers

Simile

I hear Pop through the door,

“Pop?”

Haha

“Don’t,” Pop said, and went back to shelling. “She’s still your mother.”

Question

Philomène.

I’ve felt grief too, but not like that. Question

Haha simile

I think I understand Leonie.

Simile

Simile

Haha

past Pop’s property line,

Who owns the land after? Question

Like a ghost.

a raccoon

He hisses: Mine, mine, all mine.

a large whit...

a vulture

that feeling of dissatisfaction, of wormy grief,

In those meetings, she’s a little closer.

Until I see the bo...

Richie

I’m never going to see her or hear Uncle Given call me nephew again.

Maybe, I could. Become.

The song.”

ain’t no need big enough for a key.”

Question - how does a need, however big, become a key? To liberation?

Haha a useless but fun vignette.

“There’s so many,”

“So many of us,” he

The Snake?

His blinks: a cat on the ledge of a nap.

Simile

One long brown line,

the branches are full. They are full with ghosts, two or three, all the way up to the top,

I have a picture of that! (Pitt.crows.jpg)

Simile

They speak with their eyes:

Their eyes close and then open as one, looking down on me,