Village of the Dead by Silas Foxton

Gateway to the north,

village of the dead.

Who guards this gate?

Who keeps this vigil?

Who rings the bell at dusk 

for spirits to find their way home?

This land, lost of purpose,

lost of memory,

became a den of commuters playing elite.

Too stubborn for the city,

too skill-less for the wild,

just dry enough for this damp place.

Who stands still at a crossroads?

Those on rest while passing through,

those waiting for something to arrive,

and those hungry, hollow things

who have forgotten how to move.

I came here as one of the former, and am starting to forget which it was.

I hope to get out before the land swallows me,

Before the ghosts have plucked clean 

the sinews of my spirit and left me in a box,

clacking away, as if my life still mattered,

not knowing it ended long ago.

Silas Foxton is a genderqueer tattoo artist and community worker meandering around the great lakes basin. Their work picks at a simultaneously strained and reverent relationship to land, ancestry, and identity which draws on experiences of dream life and things only seen out of the corner of one's eye.