Ruskin’s Ghost Erupts from my Workshop Professor’s Chest
by Nathan Fako
and tells us all we’re all wrong—squirrels!
—maned in the coarse gray heft of their winter fur
can indeed sigh.
Even cry, if we happen to see. It turns out, he’s done some reflecting
in death
and wants us to know that he’s come to be good friends with a man named Franz K.,
who has convinced him that no emotion nor sight is false,
for no truth there is when man is all liars, and who’s to say
a fish cannot see God?
Besides, of all souls
and consciousness… of the stretching bodies waking stiff
from hibernation, and their hungry bones—Oh!
the unhurried vigor of trees in early spring does speak…
awake, it rumbles. Dominion is a fiction and all poetry is a lie.
About the Author
Nathan Fako (he/they) is a former high school teacher. He currently lives in Ohio, and his work can be found in The Rumpus, HAD, The Shore, and elsewhere. You can find him on Bluesky – @nfako.bsky.social.
