print previewback AMIE WHITTEMORE
Ghost Pastoral
Everyone carries a history of contamination; purity is not an option.
—Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: Possibility of Life
in Capitalist Ruins
Wind collects the sound of bells,
soft pearls of water sprouting on leaves.
Stores of root vegetables soften
beneath my touch. Lilac coating
the back of my throat, I circle
the past like hair loops a drain.
The decrepit shed whose sagging
roof still shelters me, less warning
than spell. Its glass-matted floors,
rusted faucet. Where the cows
once gathered for water.
Where maples tossed their samaras
like confetti. Hovering
like a hummingbird at the edge
of my adolescence, the promise
of a third Chicagoland airport—
a shadow over the shed, the fields,
this pasture. Over what I thought
was natural—our monoculture corn,
drainage ditches, even the poison
my father perfumed through
the barn slats to kill the bees:
I never experienced the world
as anything but ruined and beautiful. 
Coral Calls Out Anthropocentric Despair
Ghost Pastoral