Yield
By Poetry Issue 95
Yield is spring’s withered apple blossom ———evolving into fall’s rosy fruit. Yield is the dry grass under our feet ———softening in dew, and summer drought abated ———-by a week of steady rain. It’s the snowmelt stream shaping itself ———-to the rocks in its path. Yield is when, besieged by a poem, you ———are taken hostage…
Read MoreVeiled Images at Passiontide
By Poetry Issue 95
A purple kite against the wall with the wind still in it. Above the side altars with the brass candelabras and unlit candles, purple ghosts. Purple ghosts behind the votive trays in the vestibule, too. Only the sacristans collecting for burning the excess palms are left uncovered, for now. Here stood the Little Flower; here,…
Read MoreSensuum Defectui
By Poetry Issue 95
———————-Holy Thursday, adoration Headlights enter through the window like a mob ——-and, in a flash, pace the repurposed cafeteria. Jesus in the garden; Jesus in the Altar of Repose. Most of us resist ——flinching when in dim light someone misjudges a folding chair. All of us note the rain pulsing like a heartbeat. ——Then we…
Read MoreArt and the Covenant
By Poetry Issue 95
i. Mid-morning Inside the rented van, a stone-gray moth head-butts the windshield, drops stunned in a looping catch, and rises to the same task, intent, not on light—there are other windows, some of them open—but this one light. Now it pauses in a midair hover, its hinged wings wide and minutely scripted in a flowing…
Read MoreThe Virgin and the Stone
By Poetry Issue 95
That woman carrying a stone might be understood like this: the Virgin and the Stone:—-to her has been foretold ————————————the weight of the world. She carries a stone like others their cross.—-A–cross: said to be from this landscape’s newest tree:—artificial tree whose fruit is a natural corpse.—-The stone has the weight ——————————————–of a dead child:…
Read MoreThe Angel of Rain
By Poetry Issue 95
has walked barefoot over the waters and left a trace of toxic silver that now seeks to infiltrate the soft memory of mollusks and sea grass, of idle crabs at the waxing crescent, of these creatures made of water and prayer that we too are made of. Slowly, cautiously, we’ll be returning to the Renaissance…
Read MoreIt’s Late
By Poetry Issue 95
It’s been a while already since the last pair of animals climbed into the ark. An admirable job. The solitary ones have remained on earth, the unpaired, the ones marked with a red felt pen by God. The chill of the first drops disperses them onto the avenues slippery from the port and docks already…
Read MoreO Men
By Poetry Issue 95
the white-haired child is there, upright in the mire a son of Adam seeking the orient within seeing himself in the eyes of the pack that combs the countryside, spurred on by brass horns his fortune has no bounds he pores over matter which unnerves his world especially the timid ones striding on ibis legs,…
Read MoreMay My Right Hand Forget Me
By Poetry Issue 95
when somebody knocks on my door it’s God asking for shelter make yourself at home and recite for me please a sacred song from your native land you who live in exile in the West and the wistful lines of your ancient poem in what language do you speak to mortals in groves we’re promised…
Read MoreA Shroud for All Time
By Poetry Issue 95
an old saying goes that we live out our days clad in a shroud thrown over one shoulder no need to be God to confirm the mystical world of the spirit and angels heaven and hell the almond tree in full bloom and all the rare people who speak on behalf of ineffable truths to…
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