Emma Ramey, author of the chapbook A Numerical Devotional published by New Michigan Press, is originally from the Seattle area, and went to school in Alabama. She teaches at Grand Valley State University and is a poetry editor for DIAGRAM. Her poems have appeared in Born Magazine, Octopus Magazine, Cranky, Horse Less Review, 5_Trope, and Post Road, among others. Ramey recently completed a manuscript, Five Steps, As in Walking Down, a book of poems.
1:
The gallows mourning the absence of body.
Still, the empty frame, birds silent, must be.
Without a corpse there is no sadness in the wood.
Would. The 1. Without one, nothing.
Before the beginning.
But a straight line. A tree.
When one disappears: the end of the universe.
I will too, the memory, the lasting impression.
Eventually, everyone will end, they say, the physicists.
What is the sound of a dead man's thoughts?
That creak in the wood, that sorrow.
Without a corpse there is no sadness in the wood.
Would. The 1. Without one, nothing.
Before the beginning.
But a straight line. A tree.
When one disappears: the end of the universe.
I will too, the memory, the lasting impression.
Eventually, everyone will end, they say, the physicists.
What is the sound of a dead man's thoughts?
That creak in the wood, that sorrow.
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