Image by Yaoting Wang

Poetry still life in necromancy

Leslie McIntosh

What makes the dead turn 

Beyond decomposition 

Is mystery is radical is 

Teleportation is a man coming 

Back to life is a toddler falling 

From a playground swing 

Zenith-spat smartly into mud 

Seeing all around lose her 

In descent puddle and dirt find her 

A worm forced from home by rain 

Wriggles closer to her ear saying 

Baby is a deer knowing no 

Language but understanding 

What it can safely eat 

Turning all the rest aside 

The hummingbird caught 

In a guitar string instantly

Released into the authority 

Of blue. Unquestioning.

An event like birth or bike riding

Leslie McIntosh’s debut volume of poetry, within-group variance, was selected by Terrance Hayes for the 2025 Changes Book Prize. Leslie’s poems have appeared in Adi Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Foglifter, Fourteen Hills, Indiana Review, Obsidian, Ploughshares, Southern Humanities Review, Witness, and widely elsewhere.