Assiniboine River Horseshoe
By Poetry Mitchell Prize 2021
and no sooner had the eaves of my eyelids drunk deep of that water than to me it seemed it had made its length into a circle. ––Paradiso XXX.88–90 I. In what now is Beaudry Park, West of the Forks, the Assiniboine is not so brown and muddy you can’t see upside-down elms, shifting in…
Read MoreA region untrodden….. from which few travelers have returned
By Poetry Mitchell Prize 2021
In the immediate vicinity of death, the mind enters on an unaccustomed order of sensations, a region untrodden before, from which few,very few travelers have returned…Here…the pilgrim pursues his course alone, and is lost to our eye. —————————–—Bishop George Burgess, 1850 I have watched the horse, the roan, turned loose, graze side by side with…
Read MoreLife in All Things
By Poetry Mitchell Prize 2021
—————————–“The real aim is not to see God —————————–in all things, it is that God, through us, —————————–should see the things that we see.” —————————–– Simone Weil Daybreak the bones of dream break the light Breakfast spoons lifted from the drain board to spend time in the yogurt bowl beside the plate of steaming scones…
Read MoreThe Tempter
By Poetry Mitchell Prize 2021
Matthew 4:1–11 Leather-winged I wheel over dunes. Dimpled crests resemble rippled seabed sand. Peering through the centuries I witness future blots: rusted armour, helicopter husk, sphincters in the dirt where mines blew out. Striations made by scream. But now a figure clarifies from distant shimmer-heat. What myth do you believe? In one, I was the…
Read MoreKindled
By Poetry Mitchell Prize 2021
Attention truncated yields torture. The saints’ patience flames on the furthest continents of faith. “That burn doesn’t seem to want to heal,” writes Simone Weil in her journal; not far below she notes the price for best Italian ices. In the Sistine Chapel, the last hellmouth glows like a room whose absent owner left lights on as illusion to prevent all realities that…
Read MoreTestimony One — 1968 — On Account of a Ripe Tomato In the Garden of Earthly Delights
By Poetry Mitchell Prize 2021
“‘Container of the Uncontainable’…doesn’t fully convey the sense of the Greek. I think a better translation would be ‘fits the unfittable,’ but that just sounds awkward…” — NICOLE ROCCAS, TIME ETERNAL —————————-1. There is no angel. —————————-2. There are cicadas clicking like a ——————————-vinyl record stuck on one relentless ——————————-everlasting note. There is occasional ——————————-lowing…
Read MoreKin Prayer
By Poetry Mitchell Prize 2021
I. I come into this world on a pair of earrings—a coil of light on her spined ear—hoopoe birthmark at her nape sifting the heft of the dhow—through her hair she wears the heaviest bells——ears cupped in shell weather she knows the price of a ticket across the black waters is not possible——— bismillah is…
Read Morebasketball prayer, for Issachar
By Poetry Mitchell Prize 2021
god is the warm smell of a vcr —————————–in a room that feels safe. violence sits like a dog at the door, —————————–but god is the door we closed when playing playstation, —————————–the beanbag chair we shared. the door is now open, —————————–and there a man stands, looking like jesus torn from his cross, —————————–staining…
Read MoreFrom The Reproaches
By Poetry Issue 109
Duck-faced, the serio-comical sermon / Goes the way of confidence art on / A Holy Week spree of Menippean arson. / Heat without light.
Read MoreDeposition
By Poetry Issue 109
A poem for the thin places. “I looked, but I saw / no craftsman, no tools. The buzz buzzed on.”
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