Ax

“to work on with an ax (a type of cutting tool)” – The Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary

I prefer this spelling, one woody vowel

hewn by the X, its blunt power

and implied danger, its cluster of noise

a strangled kiss—kss, kss, kss—

left at the end like a wound, a hickey

on a teenaged neck, though it’s easy

to see the e anyway, bleeding through

in invisible ink, spectral as an echo

is the ghost of sound, as a tree might leave

in the earless forest, chopped down

by the ax of lightning, of beetle or beaver,

of age and rot, which ax us all the same questions: what sound do you make

when you’re felled, and how is it spelled?

James Davis's poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Best New Poets, Copper Nickel, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and elsewhere. He was a 2019 writer in residence at The Mastheads and holds an MFA from the University of Florida. He lives in Denver, where he directs the Denver/Boulder Scrabble Club