Apparitional

The first thing I will do: make myself indecipherable
to you, for understanding
revises a kind of hunger.

My language has taken on
all manner of smog. I
come to fear:

I come to fear the things
that inspire me
in the wake of our destroyers.

I dream of my dead
peers. I see how they do not want pretty
things. I know they do not want me to describe pain

of any kind. They gesture
to the gold dredges
hinging into the earth,

they sink down as permafrost thaws,
as we all slink
down into a kind of hell.

Let us wash ourselves in those waters.
Let us thirst because we cannot drink them.
Let our mothers tell us of their girlhoods:

the ones they lost when they rolled willow
leaves tight in toilet paper:
smoked not to get high, not to die,

but only to see visions of Mary,
that Mary, who was some kind
of mother.

We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

This article appeared in the July 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Apparitional.”

Joan Kane