Denial | Trish Hopkinson

The surface of silent sorrow
where eyelids fold, half-rimmed
and wrapped sober over
Hiroshima and Dresden.
Colored by denial and closely
guarded, loss has haunted us.
Three generations unforgivable
and past knowing. An ancient
self-portrait from a different dimension
fell from the lemon tree in nameless grief.
The firestorm of emasculation heated
the force of life, horrifying, enormous,
flat, and arranged. The unmanned walls
of flame, unblinking in death-dealing—
a stalemate in exhaustion reflects
the inferno truth. The extraneous layer
more alive than not. Its body tenses, blurred
in abandon, grasping the essential,
and transforming space. It whispers
of progeny—a sea of corpses,
a field of bodies. In transgression,
the atmosphere speaks
her name again and again.

*Found poem source: Griffin, Susan. A Chorus of Stones. Chapter 1, “Denial.” Pgs. 3-17. Print.

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Trish Hopkinson has always loved words—in fact, her mother tells everyone she was born with a pen in her hand. She has two chapbooks Emissions and Pieced Into Treetops and has been published in several anthologies and journals, including The Found Poetry Review, Chagrin River Review, and Reconnaissance Magazine. She is a project manager by profession and resides in Utah with her handsome husband and their two outstanding children. You can follow her poetry adventures at http://trishhopkinson.com/ or on her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/trishhopkinsonpoet.

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