Chris Nealon
Summer 2024 | Poetry
Midnight
You wake up in the death forest, curious place
Tiptoe around your body! or they won’t let you back in
Your visits are becoming more frequent
You recognize small things from before, patterns in the bark, scraps of paper on the bed of needles
That mournful wind? The air in your nostrils
Every morning you return to your bed but it’s starting to feel like you’re not at home
Like your daylit life is just a footnote in the book of the underworld – “see above”
My god, you think, am I really that skeleton, eating a banana?
Your flesh feels warm and sticky
No idea rumbles out of you, though you hear approaching thunder
Eyes are blinking from behind thick growth – quizzical, like you – is the dark a cushion or a maw?
Somehow you know the only way to get out of this place is not to try to leave
It’s funny, you never thought about the “quick” in “quicksand”
Trust yourself, says the maw
Chris Nealon is John Dewey Professor in the English Department at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of five books of poetry, including The Shore (Wave Books), which was a finalist for the 2020 National Critics’ Book Circle Award, and, All About You, just out from Wave in 2024.