The Fullest Field
—for my son
darkness
among fossils
in cranky edges
in waterways
turning
like toy boats
on tub water
everywhere
this hollowing
of air that your body
has made
in being
this earth filled
with you
has hallowed
this place
like carrots
roots up and eaten
how this earth has
become
how this climate
yearns for
balance
yet continues to wobble
humanity’s oily hands
pressed against it
how a land of ash
is seasonal forever
how trees
compacted into
blunt echoes
no longer
echo
and echo
the fullest field
is a wood
and I see
your daylight body
crawling the floor
of my heart
a speaking mouth
spit within
those lips
loosely held
material
of the body
a shape that
defies
any clear
severance
when I see you
I see
the fossils
we will become
but not today
dear god not today
I want this life
to be a long sweetness
an abundance
that grows
within me
my child
what would
this dying earth be
without hope for
a better earth
in its place
what would be
your birth
without hope for
life beyond
myself
Nowhere for Safety
From where lightning first
touched, where fire
burning
did speed the ground and into trees,
pushed ash into water, stomachs
burning
sickening with soot, silt,
sludge.
burning
burning
And the animals wrestled free
of their bodies,
wilderness within and outward,
burning
spindly and brackish, teeth piercing
anything to hold onto.
burning
burning
The home is anywhere made hollow,
burning
become more than.
burning
Foundation leaky and unsettled,
bespoken and yet…
burning
Rocks shape to the landscape,
but still can puncture,
warp,
burden.
burning
burning
Instead,
indeed.
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
burning
Daniel Lassell is the author of Spit (Wheelbarrow Books / Michigan State University Press, 2021), winner of the 2020 Wheelbarrow Books Emerging Poetry Prize selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and winner of the 2021-22 Reader Views Gold Award for Poetry and the Inside Scoop Live Award for the Most Innovative Poetry Book. He is also the author of a chapbook, Ad Spot (Ethel Zine and Micro Press, 2021), and his poems have appeared in the Colorado Review, Cherry Tree, and Prairie Schooner, among others. He grew up in Kentucky, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.