by Christian Paulisich

 

an odd September
haze obscures the horizon
but I can

almost make out
the bridge or the shadow of
a bridge, face to

face with your headstone.
Do I lay here
with my body

on the stiff cut grass
or with you — when I lie
and say you rise

through six feet of dandelions and dirt, the sewers
rushing through
you now like rivers and byways

to a place better
than this, or worse?

From the hill, I watch

turkey vultures
swarm, spiral through
the white eye

of a cloud to form
a tornado, feathered and ravenous,
anxious to make

a meal of what remains.

 

 

 

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Christian Paulisich graduated from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked on The Hopkins Review. He works as a therapist in Northern Maryland, but is originally from the Bay Area, California. He was recently chosen as an honorable mention for the 2024 Gulf Coast Prize for Poetry and a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s 2024 Nature & Place Contest, and received a Summer 2024 fellowship from Brooklyn Poets. His work has been published in or is forthcoming from The Southeast Review, Salamander, Frontier, Literary Matters, Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, and other magazines. He currently reads poetry submissions for Palette Poetry.