[body farm] [soul photograph/double exposure] [late light]

Dennis Hinrichsen
| poetry

 
                                              after Sally Mann

                         —silk and honey the hair is after so much rain //

but not

the skin // the skin is coral // leaf-torn

& bee-pitted //

humped up & sloping to where the neck is vapor //

—slag

bone from the whittling down of marrow // down

to where it is scarfed

in melt //

no ore // just seepage // run-off //

                                                (though the face // the face stays

waterfall // alive // like moss or fog //
in flow)

                                                (it bubbles out // this music //

pure abandon //

—a burned

mouth kissing burned earth // shape of fire just before the singing)

Dennis Hinrichsen is the author of seven books of poetry. His most recent is Skin Music, from Southern Indiana University Press. He has new poems in Field, Under a Warm Green Linden, and forthcoming in Blackbird. Since May 2017, he has served as the first Poet Laureate of the Greater Lansing area. He is currently the Visiting Writer at Western Michigan University.

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