Category: Poems
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And Then Go Out
Among Dominicans at evening in Milan we raise a hymn to Leonardo then go out to drink among the buried saints and then go out to drink goodbye to hymns. It is the morning of a world and evening too.
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And The Bird On The Wing
Though swallows promenade about the barn in shaker reels, I track them each by each to guess their names and grandma’s names and memorize their iridescent oddities of feathers. Top, they wear the sober gray of Oxford dons, but underneath they flash like dancehall tarts. It is a country pomp. I’ve brought you here to…
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God Has No Use For Us
I wrote a little verse today, my friend says “what’s it play?” Just wind it up, I say, and watch it dance away.
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My Resumé
I’ve talked of poetry beneath the summer stars. I had a Form to take my pen. I heard the Holy Ghost correct my spelling, and I heard Him recommend Dante. I have known the operation of the Blood of Christ in conversation, at the kitchen table and I saw the sword protruding from the preacher’s…
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Spring Hill Cemetery
1. Walking on this hill of graves and trees I find the stone of Talitha beside the church now only used to mark the spring’s return of jonquils from the underworld. I stop to see her stone beside her mom’s, on no-one’s map. What bells that baby girl could surely laugh. 2. A hundred-forty Easters since that…
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Moonseed, Ampelopsis, Possumgrape
The sun withdraws its tide of liquid gold along the goldenrod, the sumac fronds by now November red (think blood, weeks old) and up the sharp-as-switches willow wands. Against the Appalachian dusk the gnats are lit like photon swarms above the ponds. My father parts the weeds to squint at slats in leaves — the…
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Risen, Indeed: An Easter Responsive Reading
R = Reader C = Congregation R: They laid him where? C: Not here, come look. R: But have you seen the Lord? C: Oh yes, we’ve seen the Lord. R: Is He alive? C: He walked the road with us. R: But did He speak? C: He spoke, and burned our hearts. R: But…
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Voices Of Apocalypse
We thought once Law was killed we’d loafon lawns composing tight haiku. Instead we’re shownas were-hyenas tearing our own breathing youngas God stares down, repenting of His workso bathed in baby blood. His sabbaths stacked in locked backroomsnow tumble down from heaven’s shelvesand clatter galaxies about. In fact,A third of golden stars go black,A third…