His lungs were filled with air motes and twice the size of
pulchritude. The gong of the cathedral’s bell nor the

recitations of catechisms could save him, as a dole can save
a drifter marooned in an icy updraft. I swear his eyes

were all pupils, two chthonic magnets, and as he
approached I awaited the darkening. The squall of two

curlews broke this trance. The moorland stood empty.
Thanatos I thought, the rumbling of tumbrels. An azimuth

can point downwards. The dead can speak if death dies in
luxurious hate. Then the whole moorland began to quake;

wraiths streamed by like an execration. Deathless, two
nightjars scrambled into bracken as tors fell. The ground

splayed like cracked flesh in a tinder. A guttering of earth
                    struck
and faded till parturition of a glistering morn.

Sterling Davis is a poet, screenwriter, and artist. He is the executive editor and publisher of Poetries in English Magazine. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in swamp pink, African American Review, Poetries in English Magazine, Nimrod, Notre Dame Review, Barrow Street, Antiphony, Southword, ​The Manhattan Review, Westwind: UCLA’s Journal of the Arts, Chiron Review, The Cortland Review, and other periodicals. Davis is a member of the Poetry Society of America and lives in Southern California. More information about his atelier can be viewed at www.thesterlingdavis.com.