Poetry Magazine
Southern Gothic
About the dead having available to them
all breeds of knowledge,
some pure, others wicked, especially what is
future, and the history that remains
once the waters recede, revealing the land
that couldn’t reject or contain it, and the land
that is not new, is indigo, is ancient, lived
as all the trees that fit and clothe it are lived,
simple pine, oak, grand magnolia, he said
they frighten him, that what they hold in their silences
silences: sometimes a boy will slip
from his climbing, drown but the myth knows why,
sometimes a boy will swing with the leaves.
Source: Poetry (November 2012).
Biography
Rickey Laurentiis was born in New Orleans. He has received a Chancellor’s Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis, where he is completing his MFA.
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Living, Life Choices, Youth, Nature, Trees & Flowers, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends
Poetic Terms Free Verse
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