Daniel Lassell

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

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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

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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.