Ari Ketzal

They grew up in Alabama. They now live in Massachusetts.

They’ve lived lots of places in between.

“Beaucoups,” we’d say back home, but as if ditching the beloved for an unhinged ghost: “boo-coos” of places.

They write often of place.

Is there truly any separation

between the land and the body,

between the body and the self?

Here, the world grows strange.

Queer.

Fuzzy.

And, maybe: softer.