Will

Will sam sax (bio) How deep am I indebted to the dead? I compile my list of derelict crafts & acquisitions : begin with breath & end with breath. All my calendars & colanders & cataclysms, all my volumes of vonnegut & auden & baldwin, all my gone men & all my felicific fictive children. To the dead I leave every river delta left, what once fed the ocean fresh water. To the dead I leave my letters for they were never mine to begin with. I leave mine body—unless who outlasts me decides otherwise : to make me a sky burial or diamond or line of cocaine. To the living I leave, I leave the living everything left. Everyone I love is dying & I can't let this be tragic : haunted hunted seraph, abandoned plate of deer ribs. Instead let every leaf of grass be my family's sick blood clean. Let me trust every writ letter is alive & liquid & will survive me. [End Page 39] sam sax sam sax is a 2015 NEA Creative Writing Fellow and a Poetry Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers, where he serves as the editor-in-chief of Bat City Review. He's the author of the chapbooks A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters (Button Poetry, 2014); sad boy / detective, winner of Black Lawrence's 2014 Black River Chapbook Prize; and all the rage (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016). He is co-editor of The Dead Animal Handbook, and his poems are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Poetry, Salt Hill, TriQuarterly, and other journals.