what do we do when we are 

just limbs

a stack of bones or

an inversion of an egg

rocked into this orbit

no godly aspiration

reaching through the blank wiring

with a label maker

half a chisel

there is a blankness in the driftless

elbow

of each slope

untidy declaration

as the tracks are deleted

as you step away from gravity

become saintly as sand

a tendril

a worm of light

impacted in the teeth;

what wisdom?

bringing the sediment closer

one eye at a time

the body becomes a thicket

lost in its own wilderness

intermediate

with no below

slapped in milk-dust

punching through the mountains

archival as each breath

left in snow

where skeletons are terminal

are lightning and warning

the boulder retreating backwards

on its haunches

ready to tip toward night

but without subjugation

with each slab prepared

as pedestal

as vascular as guts

and afterbirth

the hills interlocking

matted together 

grass or fur

the light will decide

which way to bend 

its ribbons

which allegiances

get married into

the past-present

the strain of a head

with its vision

tucked unceremoniously

into the future

until it is all explosion

spinning the big wheel

of stars 

out of retrograde

into formation

into the blessed and based earth

Tommy Nease’s collection of photographs detail landscape in constant flux. The Earth is broken and burning, fickle as the format with which he displays his awe and sharp eye. Though photographed in the Western parts of the United States and North America, the images are void of the conversations and conventions that this setting usually demands. The focus here is narrow, surgical. Simply watch the forms, in a revolving door, reflect a metamorphic land.

Book by Tommy Nease

Published December, 2022

Underlife Editions

9.5x15 in (24.13cm x 38.1cm)

52 pages, 26 photographs, with poem by Zachary Zalman Green

Digital offset (toner) on uncoated paper.

Stab-bound.

ISBN: 978-1-7356724-1-0