Weston Morrow
Weston Morrow is a poet and former print journalist with an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His recent poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Meridian, The Journal, and elsewhere. His visual art has appeared in Ninth Letter. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.
The Dead Won’t Shut Up
Even gone they want
me to echo them
but standing
at his grave
I turn away
as from a stray dog
stop following me
what do I owe the dead
boy who gave
his name to me
like a coat left
discarded on the street
I never asked for this
to live my life
and his
for years
after my father laid
his dead brother's
name across my chest
I thought I could return it
The Art of Letting Go
The acetone takes its time erasing the painting.
I can no longer stand
to see it—the thin figure
fading like a sun-
blanched awning, framed on the easel's
narrow wooden legs.
How much longer now,
'til the canvas gives up
the face, the cramped and slender limbs?
While I wait I trace
across your back the strokes I'll make
to lay the body down
on canvas, again. It's been so long
since I touched you
idly, without intent, that my desire,
swelling like a storm-spurred tide,
terrifies me. My hand quivers
and the lines serrate,
jagged and misshapen, hooked
like a crooked spine
to your hips. Our last attempt
arrived lifeless.
Just a few more minutes
and the solvent
will have finished the job, erased
another failure. Each time
I make this same mistake
of hoping, but eventually
we learn our lessons, and soon
I'll stop trying
to change the painting, let the space
between us bloom
into something resembling a life.