Fritz Ward: Our Favorite Hauntings
If a Red Tongue in the White Woods
If the forest says cemetery,
hereditary, wild
cherry. Each mouth
is a mercenary, a what-if
machine. If spring arrives
and arrives and we survive,
how much happiness
will the sting bring
back? If I suck the venom
from your jubilee.
How much of you
is the antidote
for me? Let’s skip the hearts
and break each other’s fingers
like twigs, then ring
what’s broken each year,
counting like trees.
If-and-when we marry,
let it be at the edge of the woods
with a handful of our favorite
hauntings, the oaks tented
with gypsy moths, our feet bare
and dirty as our lives.
If we must and maybe
and never make promises
or babies. If you’ll stand
with me on the fallen elm
listening for the ghost locust
hatching underground,
I’ll practice the deep breathing
that keeps my suicide
in its nest of tinder.
What if we oh-god-
oh-god-oh-god—
till we start believing?
Will the wild dogs
of our bodies
finally be more
than our howlings?
Or are we the gods
we never dreamed of?
God help us. But fuck
figuring it out.
Let’s just start running.
Run with me
down to the river,
where we’ll sink
our fingers into the soft silt
of everything we’re about
to become. It won’t solve
a god-damn thing,
but we’ll make a memory
of the mud and sunlight.
And if you trust me
after all that, after all this,
then I’ll be your deer
at the edge of the woods
surrendering my tongue
to the saltlick of your skin.
Fritz Ward is the author of Tsunami Diorama (The Word Works, 2017) and the chapbook Doppelganged (Blue Hour Press, 2011). The recipient of the Cecil Hemley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America, his poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, The Adroit Journal, BOAAT, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. He works at Swarthmore College and lives just outside of Philadelphia.