Ceremony by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back

Poem name: Ceremony Poet name: Kelly Rose Pflug Back Poem: In grim séance of the season’s turning the oldest of the dead avert their faces from electric light full moon hanging, washed in pastel vapours garlands of Day-Glo skeletons fluttering in cellophane shrouds. Welcome: to the cold half of the year; to the inchoate shapes who deepen the gathering dark eyes repelling the light of transport trucks gutting the night as they screech past. There’s nothing here that wasn’t something else, first– all life, a process of returning new day fissuring the horizon over decimated sea ice red pigment transferred from my mouth onto tissue paper in the trash: all my love to the underworld– to the bottom of the landfill plastic flowers strewn among denuded bones of animals. All life, a process of returning: with empty hands, I offer myself. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Kelly Rose Pflug-Back Kelly Rose Pflug-Back is an author and textile artist whose work has appeared before in places like Strange Horizons, Toronto Star, Augur, Briarpatch, and many others. Their first full-length collection of poems, The Hammer of Witches, is available from Caitlin Press/Dagger Editions (2020).