“Hunger for Something” by Chase Twichell

Sometimes I long to be the woodpile,
cut-apart trees soon to be smoke,
or even the smoke itself,

sinewy ghost of ash and air, going
wherever I want to, at least for a while.

Neither inside nor out,
neither lost nor home, no longer
a shape or a name, I’d pass through

all the broken windows of the world.
It’s not a wish for consciousness to end.

It’s not the appetite an army has
for its own emptying heart,
but a hunger to stand now and then

alone on the death-grounds,
where the dogs of the self are feeding.

__________

“Hunger for Something” by Chase Twichell, which can be found in his 2010 collection Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been.

The photo: shot in New Ulm, Texas

More favorites written in a similar tone and style:

• “For My Brother” by friend of the site David Mcloughlin
• “The Russian Greatcoat” by Theodore Deppe
• “Every Day” by Tom Clark