[Scribed, we mull ghosts—]

Scribed, we mull ghosts—
their rote forms.                                                 

What’s ever to a shade?
What’s decay?

If not the softening edge of any one thing,
the din of us—(most days)—the heft & swell.

Dire relics / made apt.

Were there oceans.
There were oceans.

—though days were—

—though nights were—

As cove ought,
as bough to root & further—

flux and flummox,

thread in us a glinting,
our eyes bound up like stars.

Devon Wootten is a faculty member at Whitman College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing, Fence, LIT, and Colorado Review, among others. A former resident at Yaddo and Anderson Ranch, he holds an MFA from the University of Montana and a PhD from the University of Iowa. He was a 2019–2020 Fulbright Scholar to Ireland, where he taught at NUI Galway. He lives with his wife among the wheat fields of southeast Washington and is responsible for bestamericanyou.com and wikipoesis.com.