I am a golem of dead men,
forgotten dreams the thread that stitches
together patchwork appendages.
Memories sunken the way Spanish galleons
list in storm squalls, their bounty buried
by mud, refuse and a thousand leagues
between sea bottom and hope.
My face hollow with rotten decay,
unburied graves without names.
hundreds of apparitions claim
pieces of this corporeal puzzle.
This is not life, but somnambulism,
a mortal sleepwalking amid the living.
My tongue speaks tomorrow into being,
while these hands craft the art of silence,
wrapped around my dark throat
and a scream without echo.
About the Author
Tripp J Crouse (they/them) is niizh manidoowag (Two-Spirit) Ojibwe. Tripp serves as a poetry reader for Anomalous Press, or ANMLY, and has poetry published or forthcoming in The Yellow Medicine Review, oddball magazine, Grassroots, Zygote in My Coffee, Words & Whispers, beestung and Rising Phoenix Review. their first poetry chapbook For Ever Dead Buffalo is available from Bottlecap Press (2024).
