Poetry by Derek Graf
GENE THERAPY
Carrion beetles swarm the distant river.
Her father erodes from cancer, his slow
death grinding its teeth. She steps inside
a shower full of leaves. Within the host
cell she hears herself screaming. An actual
bird soars above her subjectivity. Rain swells
the trees all summer, the sky braces for one
more myth. The distant river, the obvious
hills. In the shower she pulls herself apart.
Carrion traces. An actual life.
Derek Graf is the author of Green Burial, winner of the 2021 Elixir Press Poetry Award for a First or Second Book of Poems. His work has appeared in Meridian, The Journal, and Sixth Finch. He teaches in the English Department at New York Institute of Technology.
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