Paul lIechko
Ceremonial Life
You drank the ceremonial dilution following a line of precursors into a softer form of the usual savagery
a harsh world of dust and words of labor and poetry where strong men battle the television night and dogs hold the jungle at bay
your home is a country is a place inside a country is a specific intensity of place that lacks forgiveness is a blinded intensity of living
all of this exploding with a sense of terror that subsides into bafflement
and shadows stretch from whatever it is that we call home to whatever it is that we call forest
and somewhere inside the forest there is a thing that we might call possibility if we could just catch a taste of it as it flees with all of its wildness into the darkened depth of the unrecoverable cry
and so we cling to each other waiting for all of this to end
hoping upon hope that we can survive the need to live.
Paul Ilechko is the author of the chapbooks “Bartok in Winter” (Flutter Press, 2018) and “Graph of Life” (Finishing Line Press, 2018). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Manhattanville Review, West Trade Review, River River, Otoliths and Indicia. He lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ.