Featured Poem 8/19 – “please advise stop [I was dragging a ladder slowly over stones stop]”

please advise stop [I was dragging a ladder slowly over stones stop] by Rusty Morrison

I was dragging a ladder slowly over stones stop
it was only from out of my thoughts that I could climb stop
not from the room please

my father’s dying offered an indelicate washing of my
perception stop
the way the centers of some syllables scrub away all other
sound stop
his corpse merely preparing to speak its new name at the
speed of nightfalling please

each loss grows from a previously unremarkable vestigial organ
stop
will I act now as if with a new limb stop
a phantom limb of the familial please advise