Carrying the Bones
By Poetry Issue 126
I carry the bones
of everyone I have loved, even a little,
and of every forebear atop my head.
Into This Dark Forest You Have Already Turned (II)
By Poetry Issue 126
The luckiest can
be shown how
to walk through
fire en route
Into This Dark Forest You Have Already Turned
By Poetry Issue 126
a dream whose
herrings all run
in red weather
We May as Well Be at the Menil (VI)
By Poetry Issue 126
Purgatorio’s full of song.
Read MoreBoots
By Poetry Issue 126
“I must take them to the cobbler,
they’ve only got slightly
worn-down heels,”
A Song About Traction
By Poetry Issue 126
First you load requests into your devotions
like cargo into a railcar, the overburdened rolling stock
heaves toward the port of New Heaven so sluggishly
that half the goods pass their expiry date.
Little Psalm You Have Slept / Seething Pastoral
By Poetry Issue 126
Purring Insight Death (My Hand Touched Me) / After Words Ascribed to Raphael
By Poetry Issue 126
What is scared is what is present. Sacred. What is sacred,
clumsy finger. You walk alone like an executioner.
A Goy’s Guide to Tanakh Hebrew: Chesed
By Poetry Issue 126
the psalmist attributes such steadfast grace
chiefly to the Holy One, who bestows
compassion so tightly bound to justice
that any effort to rebuild the world
requires both be lived in proper measure.
Heaven on Earth
By Poetry Issue 126
It’s no big metaphor
that our good aims have sunk to bad slapstick:
boat on the blink, the skipper doubly pissed