SITTING IN SUNFLOWERS

By Liza Hudock

To be specific, in the valley of a river. Nestled
like a civilization, I crouch like a dot on a map.
O line of longitude, pierce thru me on your way
from the newly dug Shubunkin pond in the nature
preserve to the north, down to Zug Island,
site of the Great Mound where people
buried their dead for thousands of years.
Where blast furnace and slag heap ooze and burn
non-stop all night like Dante’s hell,
which I have to remind myself was only a guess.
Hell is only Dante’s guess, no place for the dead,
and a grave is no place for the mill, which goes
on blazing south of me. Sitting safe
among sunflowers wrapped in bindweed,
I reach out and squeeze a stalk. Dry and sturdy
as a femur. On another continent, along a different
river, archeologists unearthed a mammoth-bone hut.
And as I sit in sunflowers, I feel like an ancestor.
One single stalk becomes complete sufficiency,
like real synecdoche, as if to feel the bone
were to consume the entire beast.
From one creature, I have meat to eat.
I use the bones and skin to build my house
and clothe me and I burn the bones for heat.
And coiled around the sunflower is bindweed
like the skill I need to track the mammoth,
bring it down, preserve it well, et cetera.

Liza Hudock lives in Detroit, Michigan. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College. Her first collection of poems, Reveille, is forthcoming from Flood Editions in 2025.