Scrap Bones

Collier Brown’s Scrap Bones reads like a post-pandemic epilogue to T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” No angels or flying horses here, just panic disorders, email fatigue, and the spiritual dead end of a 23-and-Me test kit. And yet, resilient are the muses in this collection—the bees, the starlings, the dragonflies—skimming over the wastes.

The Sabine Series in Literature

...

from “Orion, Break”

they’re sleeping in their homes,

they’re waking from their beds,

they’re at their desks

and on a call. They’re unimpressed.

That’s not your fault.

Nor your concern. I’m tired

of images, of lines and dots and codes.

When I step into the dark,

I only want the novas

and the nowheres in between,

and if I’m very lucky—

if I’ve beaten all the odds—

just one, naÏve fluoresce

of the insect who

is its own hello/goodbye.