Sundays, constellations of corners
in some vast house, a mansion perhaps.
Trifold of angles,
each converging on a point,
maculate nexus (dust, spiders, etc.).

This is not something to be
transcended, something above which
merit passes.

It’s the body that’s alone, a harbor
waiting for new ships.

I am writing this from the outside
of another war, although I’m looking
in, I see the broken columns
of my cousins’ names
flaring in swift succession.

My mother messages me to let me know
that (as per ancestry.com)
she is related
to herself, to my sister & to me.

This is encouraging, the way the moon
is, seeming to float
above our misdemeanors, not judging.

Isaiah 7:18
suggests the bees are waiting
to see the end of us, but I don’t know
the Hebrew, “bees” could mean
“wasps.”

Upon all thorns / the Lord shall hiss
(for the fly & for the bee).
I think about this, a little while,
as a form the word pure might take.

A Christ-stricken tree
cut from bone-white paper
& affixed to the collage, soundlessly.

 

 

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G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are feast gently (Tupelo), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America; The Earliest Witnesses (Tupelo/Carcanet); and The Opening Ritual (Tupelo). Recent work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Paris Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, Yale Review, The Nation, New American Writing, Conjunctions, and other journals. He lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University.

 

 

 

Image: Kamran Abdullayev for Unsplash+