“Part ghostly dream, part reality, ‘This Place’ conjures the cemetery. I was thinking about whether nature is enhanced by (or alienated from) the constructed space of a burial site. I was looking at ‘cemetery trees’ and considering whether they belong to the cemetery, or whether the cemetery belongs to them. I was noting the dimensions and limits of a grave plot, the paperwork necessary to bury a loved one, the rites that are evoked in memorialization. The poem speaks to the despair of wanting to hold space for a life despite the failure of being able to truly do so. ‘This Place’ is from a larger work titled Gates & Fields.”
—Jennifer Firestone