what do we do when we are
just limbs
a stack of bones or
an inversion of an egg
rocked into this orbit
no godly aspiration
reaching through the blank wiring
with a label maker
half a chisel
there is a blankness in the driftless
elbow
of each slope
untidy declaration
as the tracks are deleted
as you step away from gravity
become saintly as sand
a tendril
a worm of light
impacted in the teeth;
what wisdom?
bringing the sediment closer
one eye at a time
the body becomes a thicket
lost in its own wilderness
intermediate
with no below
slapped in milk-dust
punching through the mountains
archival as each breath
left in snow
where skeletons are terminal
are lightning and warning
the boulder retreating backwards
on its haunches
ready to tip toward night
but without subjugation
with each slab prepared
as pedestal
as vascular as guts
and afterbirth
the hills interlocking
matted together
grass or fur
the light will decide
which way to bend
its ribbons
which allegiances
get married into
the past-present
the strain of a head
with its vision
tucked unceremoniously
into the future
until it is all explosion
spinning the big wheel
of stars
out of retrograde
into formation
into the blessed and based earth
Tommy Nease’s collection of photographs detail landscape in constant flux. The Earth is broken and burning, fickle as the format with which he displays his awe and sharp eye. Though photographed in the Western parts of the United States and North America, the images are void of the conversations and conventions that this setting usually demands. The focus here is narrow, surgical. Simply watch the forms, in a revolving door, reflect a metamorphic land.
Book by Tommy Nease
Published December, 2022
9.5x15 in (24.13cm x 38.1cm)
52 pages, 26 photographs, with poem by Zachary Zalman Green
Digital offset (toner) on uncoated paper.
Stab-bound.
ISBN: 978-1-7356724-1-0