for DaMaris Hill

the past is always here – there is a house gripping a rock at the bottom of the well – stairwell collapsed, mold blooming in the eaves – wasn’t that the place the child waited, with less & less air – walking in the weakening light, sticky webs that float between the trees fold over your hands – as is above, so is below – a bridge to spit from, the shelter of an overhang marked with cans of gold & red paint – you scrawl her name floating in a cross-hatched cloud, you find a hunting knife in a plastic bag – walking the length of concrete & dirt between places, the fields always split in two by the road – split wits have long named the slaughterer & the slaughtered

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Gabriel Jesiolowski works in a research-based practice using drawings, photographs, installations, poems, essays, and printed matter. Their first book, As Burning Leaves, selected by Carl Phillips, won the Benjamin Saltman Award from Red Hen Press and is due out in 2017. Their most recent work can be found in Tupelo Quarterly, DIAGRAM, The Sonora Review and So to Speak: A Feminist Review. They were a Fall 2016 writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony.