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).