Many-Hued and Challenging: Rich Ferguson

April 29, 2020, Kate Belew With Rich Ferguson (Los Angeles)

I put on the record and make friends with my ceiling

it smiles back at me, and whispers:

never has solitude offered us such a brighter shade of pale

many-hued and challenging. I wait

for those challenges

to shed their camouflage

of sirens and sickness

but I have never been so great at patience, I think, I mean 

how restraint

can sometimes begin a love letter to itself 

by saying,

dear bullet

or, perhaps it is

sent by carrier pigeon, smoke signal, printed 

across a flag like 

first hellos and final goodbyes,

dead air and stringed silences

whose songs

tattoo our wrists with

tiny birds feet. So what happens next?

I whisper to my ceiling

and just like me, it shrugs, a slow, shuddering breath.