[POETRY]

[12/10/25]

The Ones That Don’t Die

Three Poems by Sarah Ellis

Death Came Like

The death came like death comes to the dead. The dead like death came like death to the dead. The death came like death comes to like death comes to the dead like death. The dead. The death. Death comes like death like death like dead. Dead death. Death like the dead like the dead like death. Death came like death to the dead. Like the dead like the dead like to death. Like death comes to like death comes to the dead. The death came like death. The dead like death came like death to the dead. Death comes to the dead like the death came like.

The Dogs of Chernobyl

The ones that
Don’t die grow
Stronger. Sleep more
Soundly. Awaken alive.
And the leaves vacated
Their posts last night.
Down to the ground
And away from their
Trees so brittle, so gently,
Down to the root
Just beneath them,
Close enough not to
Touch but to hear them:
Here the angling pulse
like a heartbeat, like
the scratch of the dog’s
nails on the roughed up
hardwood, like the hot hush
of splitting uranium, fission fragments
falling fast as leaves in loveless autumn.
The ones that
Don’t die don’t
Sleep. Stare up
At the heat-treated
Tanzanite sky and
Spit over their shoulders.
Laugh at the low hanging moon.

Alternate Names for God

merciful butcher
the inadequacy of language to recall
pain, or light
whatever comes first

SARAH ELLIS is a chemist and graduate of Reed College who lives and writes in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, #Ranger Magazine, and Oyster River Pages, among others.