Local Landscape by Sophie Livingston

Oh what my eyes have seen.

 

The severed heads of men

On stems, like seedpods

Sprouting from a roundabout.

 

Oh what my eyes have seen.

 

A tree on which the bloody leaves

Are cleaved from wrists and hang to point

The road to Hell.

 

I have seen the song ripped from the throats of children.

The earth suck girls like cherries from the stone.

I have seen a vision of a thing too terrible to name

Perched dark upon the crater’s rim.

 

Oh what my eyes have seen.

Let me pluck them out and set my foot upon them.

Let me take this knife and gouge them free.

Let me hang them in the marketplace.

Allow me to

Unsee.