Justin Groppuso-Cook, Detroit, Michigan, USA
No Need for Artificial Light
We bear witness to this night
where all creation surrounding us
is lucid, lit up in the slightest.
Meteors shower us; they leave their signatures
in the puddles that form
in our footprints—the space
we leave behind to reach
a clearing. Walk light, speak soft.
The rift of our Milky Way
lies like a spine fossilized
in the quarry overhead. We gather
tinder, kindling dead cholla.
Build a lean-to in the pit. Get down
on hands & knees, spark it
with flint. Add splintered logs
& birth a well of flames
to burn our clothes, these rags.
Circle the flurry of ashes, rub it into our skin.
The fire sinks into a state
of smolder. We play the embers
with our fingertips & tease
a little glow: a sprinkle building steam.
Rain clouds unthread & weave
into volcanic peaks; darkness
is simply when the eyes are shut.
Terrestrial Meditation
A raven leads me to the west, her black feathers twirl
to earth as grains of yellow & magenta gypsum
kick up in a whirlwind. My eyes water from the dust—so
far from source yet so close to the other. Two legs
carry me to the peak, hopping from edge to edge, cliff
to cliff, followed through with forward momentum
& a little faith. Rock cuts my palms as my blood
coagulates with sand; lightning splits open the distance.
There is no refuge, no savior: only solitude, my keep. I
push up the steep to a clearing, a portal: a world
unfurling with rainstorms & surfacing light that fills
the ridges, the curvature of mesas. A landscape
sculpted by ancient tides, erosion, monsoon seasons, &
trickling white gypsum: weather that shaped epochs
& eras of this body, glimmering; shaped life through
the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, the primordial periods
of flowering plants. The piñon, juniper, & sagebrush
twist together before me like fingers in a ritual.
Justin Groppuso-Cook is a Writer-in-Residence for InsideOut Literary Arts Project as well as a Teaching Artist for Living Arts Detroit. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Haunted Waters Press, Dream Pop Journal, Luna Luna Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Rust + Moth, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry among others. He received a 2015 Pushcart Prize nomination for his work featured in Duende. In 2022, he will be a resident at Carve Magazine’s Writing Workshops Paris. More information can be found on his website, www.sunnimani.com.
