Tag: American Poetry

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: KILIAN MCDONNELL

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ON HEARING THINGS MALE
By Kilian McDonnell

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth . . . a wind from God swept over the face of the waters . . . Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. Genesis 1:1-3

Did the author of Genesis hear Yahweh’s voice
like the rumble of thunder over Mount Zion?
And did the man say to himself, as though spitting
against the wind, this boom must be male?
Male ears hear things male. Even medieval giants
decreed, Whatever is received, is received
according to the mode of the receiver. And if
Yahweh drops her hairbrush in the desert,
who can hear it? And write it in the book?


(Today’s poem appears in God Drops and Loses Things, and appears here today with permission from Liturgical Press and the poet.)


Kilian McDonnell, osb, born in Great Falls, Montana in 1921, has been a monk/priest of St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN since 1945. He began writing poetry seriously at the age of 75. He will be 91 in September of 2012. His poems have appeared in America, Minnesota Monthly, Theology Today, American Benedictine Review, ISTI Bulletin, Christian Century, and The National Catholic Reporter. In 2000 Park Press—of Waite Park, Minnesota—published some 30 poems in a promotional volume entitled Adam on the Lam. In 2003 St. John’s University Press published his first book of poetry, Swift, Lord, You Are Not, which also contained a personal essay, “Poet: Can You Start at Seventy-Five?” His second book of poetry, Yahweh’s Other Shoe (St.John’s University Press, 2006) was a finalist in the Minnesota Book Award for poetry. In 2009 he published God Drops and Loses Things, and in 2011 Wrestling With God. For the larger portion of his life Kilian McDonnell has been active as a professional theologian and a university professor. He has taught in the graduate school of theology of St. John’s University and has written, edited, and been published in numerous theological publications and works.

Editor’s Note: During the writer’s residency I recently participated in, “Believing in Writing,” at The Collegeville Institute in Collegeville, MN, I submitted a number of poems from my current project to be workshopped. I am writing a book of poetry that explores and contemplates the feminine in biblical literature. During the workshop, one of my fellow writers asked if my poems are an homage to Father Kilian McDonnell. I had never read “Father Kilian,” as the man lovingly referred to him, and so he pulled all four of his poetry books off the shelf and suggested that I take a look.

I began with Yahweh’s Other Shoe, and within twenty-four hours I had read all four of Father Kilian’s books. I could not believe what I had read. Of all of the poets I know of who are contemplating Judaism in their work, who are contemplating the Torah, who are writing or exploring midrashic literature, I found that I have more in common as a poet with a ninety-year-old Catholic Priest than any other poet I’ve read. I returned my borrowed books to the Collegeville Institute and walked over to the Liturgical Press to buy all four for myself.

Father Kilian truly inspires me. To come into poetry so late in life is impressive in and of itself. But to be a male, a Catholic male, a Catholic priest no less, and be asking questions about the role of women in biblical literature takes an admirable amount of courage and humility. Today’s poem asks one of the most essential questions about the inception of the sublimated role of women in Judeo-Christianity, and I thank Father Kilian for his talent, for his bravery, and for sharing his own questions with the world.

Want to see more by and about Kilian McDonnell?
Purchase Kilian McDonnell’s poetry books from Liturgical Press

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ANYA SILVER, PART DEUX

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STRAWBERRIES IN SNOW
By Anya Silver

Belief comes too easily to the ill.
Miracles fall from their lips like gems,
are worn like secret amulets. A woman,
I’m told, brushed her steps of snow
and found the very thing she craved
to eat, strawberries fresh as summer,
dimpled sweet and red beneath the rime.
Pink climbed back to her ailing cheeks,
the way new blood makes the body sing.
And yet, no one talks of her sister,
who also searched, found nothing there.
She swept and swept until she fell.
I’ve been so good, she wept, the wind
remorseless over earth that wouldn’t bear.


(Today’s poem previously appeared in the Belleview Literary Review and appears here today with permission from the poet.)


Anya Silver’s book of poetry, The Ninety-Third Name of God, was published by LSU press. She teaches at Mercer University and lives in Macon, Georgia with her husband and son.

Editor’s Note: Last week I featured Anya Silver’s “French Toast” on this series. It is one of the most successful love poems I have ever read, and it was the poem that needed to be shared on that particular Saturday. But I accidentally stumbled upon “French Toast” after securing today’s poem, and so I want to treat you to another entry by this very talented poet.

Today’s poem contemplates faith, that intersection between humanity and the unknown with which so many of us struggle. It asks the logical questions that one asks when facing illness and death with little more than hope to go on.

Want to see more by and about Anya Silver?
Buy The Ninety-Third Name of God on Amazon
Anya Silver Featured as Image Journal’s Artist of the Month: October 2010
Poetry Daily

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ANYA SILVER

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FRENCH TOAST
By Anya Silver

Pain perdu: lost bread. Thick slices sunk in milk,
fringed with crisp lace of browned egg and scattered sugar.
Like spongiest challah, dipped in foaming cream
and frothy egg, richness drenching every yeasted
crevice and bubble, that’s how sodden with luck
I felt when we fell in love. Now, at forty,
I remember that “lost bread” means bread that’s gone
stale, leftover heels and crusts, too dry for simple
jam and butter. Still, week-old bread makes the best
French toast, soaks up milk as greedily as I turn
toward you under goose down after ten years
of marriage, craving, still, that sweet white immersion.


Today’s poem was previously published in The Ninety-Third Name of God (LSU Press, 2010), and appears here today with permission from the poet.


Anya Silver’s book of poetry, The Ninety-Third Name of God, was published by LSU press. She teaches at Mercer University and lives in Macon, Georgia with her husband and son.

Editor’s Note: I am not usually one for love poems. This week the love of my life proposed, and—in my nerdy, poetry-loving way—I scoured the internet for a love poem worthy of commemorating the event. My search dragged me through the stick of syrupy pieces, insulted me with poems of the butterflies-and-rainbows variety, and meandered through poems of antiquity that incited sleep instead of expressing in a visceral way this moment of elated love. And then I read “French Toast.”

I find myself unequipped to elaborate on why today’s poem is an example of expert craftsmanship. Unequipped because Anya Silver is a master of words, and my own seem slack in comparison.

As I read today’s poem aloud, I savor the feel of the words in my mouth. Words that mimic the sweetness of the dish they describe. A dish that is not a food, but a metaphor. A metaphor that is so successful, so unexpected, that it nearly redefines the idea of metaphor itself. At the very least, it becomes the standard against which metaphor should be held, and it sets the bar incredibly high.

All that, and it is a love poem! And not a poem inspired by the fleeting passion of new love, but a poem that speaks to what it is to make a life with someone. To love and desire someone as sincerely ten years into a committed relationship as you did when you first felt “sodden with luck” for falling in love.

This is a poem of optimism. A poem that inspires me to love my man fiercely for the rest of my life. This is the poem to express my heart’s desires for our impending union. I thank Anya Silver for this gift, and I dedicate today’s poem to Matt Teitelman, my soon-to-be husband and the love of my life. May our love be like french toast forever.

Want to see more by and about Anya Silver?
Buy The Ninety-Third Name of God on Amazon
Listen to “French Toast on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (Listen at 3:05)
Anya Silver Featured as Image Journal’s Artist of the Month: October 2010

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ERIN LYNDAL MARTIN

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AT BUCKFAST ABBEY: AFTER THE BEE BURNINGS
By Erin Lyndal Martin

I know they were here.
Their vertigo twists around
the wind.      It is my sickness too.

I play blind, smooth over tree trunks with my palms.
I smell the soot of brimstone, the dangling of a hive.

Daylight hard as leaves.   I smell the smoke.
Skeps still burn like witches.

              They used to harvest honey by burning up the hive.
              Bee bodies and a single rhubarb leaf
              kindled the flame for beekeepers
              to mine with bare hands.

                            The rest of the comb
              they melted down cell by soggy cell
until the wax was useful light.

                            And honeybees, they say,
              were the first tears
                            cried on the cross.

              ~

              Ghost bees shiver,
                            here a leg stuck in resin,
              here a wing in the grit of pollen.

                            I can feel their flight
              trying to make these woods
                            warm again.

              I’m asking for the bees back.
              If it’s in your power,

make the stark and sketchy treetops
              look less like junkie tourniquets
and more like apologies.

                                           Make the trees say they’re sorry
                                                   they kept growing
                            after thirty thousand hearts
                                           were burned.

                                           If it’s in your power, make me say
                                                   I’m sorry too.

              ~

                                           There’s still the scent of smoke
              in the air, maybe from a bonfire,
                            maybe not, and beneath it is the
              sticky hum of amber, and somewhere
                                           beneath that is me—notebook,
                                                   cigarette lighter, plastic bag.

              I can hear the vespers next door.
              The living are praying,

                            but I need the ash
              and the burned-out bees,
              the brimstone to be wise.

                          I want to ink out
              the taste of charred honey
                                           so I can be glad when there is no fire.

                                           Learn this lesson for me.   Tell me what
                            not to do, how to keep without taking,

                                           how to do better,
              here, now, my hair in my eyes,
                                           a pencil in my hair.



(Today’s poem previously appeared in Diode, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)



Erin Lyndal Martin is a poet, fiction writer, and music journalist. Her work has recently appeared in Guernica, InDigest, and Crowd. She is associate fiction editor for H_ngm_n and runs the music website Euterpe’s Notebook.

Editor’s Note: I have had today’s poem in my arsenal for a few weeks now, but something told me to save it for today. I write today’s entry from my own Abbey, St. John’s Abbey at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN. I am at the end of a week-long writer’s residency titled “Believing in Writing” at The Collegeville Institute, a workshop centered around writer’s contemplating faith. There could not be a better moment for today’s poem to be featured.

I have had the pleasure of featuring Erin Lyndal Martin’s writing before on this series. When I came across today’s poem in Diode, I was so vividly struck by its story, by its imagery, that I knew I needed to seek the writer out and ask permission to share this startling, beautiful piece. As I searched for the poem’s author I thought, “Erin Lyndal Martin… I know that name… I have loved her work before.”

It never ceases to amaze me how the heart yearns for the same beauty time and again. How I can search the Internet for poetry week after week, month after month, year after year, and then, completely out of context, fall in love with the same poet time and again. So it was with Ms. Martin, a poet whose work I love no matter where in time or space our paths cross. It is as much a pleasure to share her poetry with you today as it was to have her steal away my breath when I read today’s poem.

I dedicate today’s post to Michael Dennis Browne, our fearless leader on this past week’s journey, and to my fellow workshop participants, a group of people whose thoughts and words on faith have reshaped my view of the world.

Want to see more by and about Erin Lyndal Martin?
The Offending Adam
The Diagram
The Collagist

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JOHN REPP

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Photo by Katherine Knupp


THE LETTER
By John Repp

In the letter,
             she says she doesn’t

want to end
             the letter so I’ll

never stop reading
             this scrap light

as ash in the pit
             where I’ve sworn

for thirty years to burn it



Today’s poem originally appeared in diode and appears here today with permission from the poet.


John Repp is a widely published poet, fiction writer, essayist, and book critic. Since 1978, he has taught writing and literature at various colleges, universities, schools, and social service agencies. A native of southern New Jersey, he has lived for many years in northwestern Pennsylvania with his wife, the visual artist Katherine Knupp, and their son, Dylan.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem contains the joy of the unsaid. It enables the reader to invent a world—a relationship—from a few fragments of speech. There is so much joy in the power of the small poem, and in language that teases, that alludes to something larger than it shares and enables us to choose our own adventure.

Want to see more by John Repp?
John Repp’s Official Website
Buy John Repp’s Books

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TERRI KIRBY ERICKSON

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DEPRESSION
By Terri Kirby Erickson

Her knees nearly buckle with the weight of a new star,
but oh the sweet relief when one of them falls or when
the sun pulls up its rays like rope ladders because light,
even light is too heavy for her to carry now. And look

at her loose grip on the baby’s stroller, as if any minute
she might let go. Other mothers’ eyes follow their children,
glisten like the wet clay of a newly fashioned Madonna,
but her expression never changes. She sees nothing but

the dull, brown jar where she spends her days alone, its
walls slick and impossible to climb, the lid screwed shut—
feels nothing but cold glass against her back, the tightening
in her chest when she tries to breathe what little air is left.


Today’s poem originally appeared in Tryst, is included in the poet’s latest collection of poetry, In the Palms of Angels (Press 53), and appears here today with permission from the poet.


Terri Kirby Erickson is the award-winning author of three collections of poetry, including her latest book, In the Palms of Angels (Press 53), winner of a 2012 Nautilus Silver Award in Poetry and the Gold Medal for Poetry in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the 2013 Poet’s Market, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, JAMA, The Christian Science Monitor, storySouth, and many other publications. She lives in North Carolina.

Editor’s Note: Terri Kirby Erickson has a way with direct, straightforward narrative poetry. You are at once within the scene she is painting, carried along by her skill with the lyric and the image, amidst a palpable world where you feel you could actually pluck the fruit from the trees of her invention. Today’s poem captures the inner workings of a sometimes secret condition, yet Erickson’s words bridge the shame gap by giving rise to empathy in the reader.

Want to see more by Terri Kirby Erickson?
Terri Kirby Erickson’s Official Website
Press 53 Author Page
Buy In the Palms of Angels on Amazon
Buy Telling Tales of Dusk on Amazon
Buy Thread Count on Amazon

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JOHN PAUL DAVIS

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MYSELF, WITH THE NIGHT ON MY FACE
By John Paul Davis

For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.    – The Gospel of John 5:4

If I had known more grace. Heartwinter,
& all the locks frozen over. The songs
I should have been able to sing. I no
longer want to know the answers
to any of the questions. My body
less reliable now that I’m older,
& the doctor tells me I’m fit
for my age. Healthy, but not whole.
Like how I have forgotten
how to pray, the muscle that yearns
for God gone slack in my mind
after all these years. I have stopped
expecting the world to deliver magic
to me, yet it continues. Like the clouds
over Brooklyn the morning after I face
the difficult thing & deliver the bad news,
the perfect play they make with the light.
Like being awakened after midnight
by the memory of the song,
only when I listen in the bedroom’s cavedark,
the music is sweeter
than I had recalled, it is a deeper
taste. The music inside the music.
I tell you, I have been granted
the more costly victory. Like love, again.
Like a lame man on crutches to the water
expecting to beg for the day’s provisions
& what waits for him terrifies
him most: unseen,
fingers armed with heartbreak,
about to trouble the pool, the angel.


Today’s poem appears here today with permission from the poet.


John Paul Davis writes poems. Learn more about him here: www.johnpauldavis.org.

Editor’s Note: John Paul Davis is a badass wordsmith with a real knack for blank verse, which is no easy craft to master. I have had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Davis read several times at NYC’s louderArts, and am often moved—if not breathtaken—by his poetry. Today’s selection confronts the human condition as Davis often does, with words that aim straight for the soul of the reader and do not fail to find their target. From the micro of the inner workings of one man to the macro of humanity’s relationship with God, Davis is the poet taking one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind: “Like how I have forgotten / how to pray, the muscle that yearns / for God gone slack in my mind / after all these years.”

Want to see more by John Paul Davis?
John Paul Davis Official Website

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: WILLIAM REICHARD

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PALIMPSEST
By William Reichard

The dead call to say they’re not dead, or they are, but in any case, would I please stop writing about them? All of my old lovers call to say they prefer their privacy, so maybe I should stop writing about them. My brothers and my sisters call, then my mother, then my partner, all to ask, would I please stop writing about them? All right. But what then? This morning I sat in an office surrounded by a sea of papers. They all had to be put in order. So I put them in order, in neat little piles, then larger groups, then into the folders and the files where they belong. This is what I’m good at when I’m not writing about the lives of those I love, have loved, may love; when I’m not borrowing heavily from the lessons they’ve learned through pleasure and pain. This afternoon I stopped for the things we need to keep our house running: cleansers, cat food, laundry detergent. I pick them up week by week, we use them up week by week and then I go and get more. This is what I’m good at when I’m not remembering the fields of my youth, the evenly spaced rows of green and black, plant and soil, the odd sunflowers that sprang up because hungry birds carried the seeds from feeder to nest and dropped a few along the way; the sudden tall yellowness of such flowers in the cultivated order of things. This is what I’m good at when I’m not recalling a former love, the bend of his back, shoulders sculpted by afternoon light. This evening I made dinner, something not too good but edible. This is what I do when I’m not reliving the scenes of a childhood I remember more from stories than experience. I feed things: my partner, my cats, the strays in the garage. This is what I’m good at: taking care of people and things that need taking care of. This, when I’m not thinking of my parents, their lives intersecting at just the wrong time in order to make each of us, my brothers and sisters and me. When I’m not dwelling on this then I’m washing the dishes, washing the clothes, taking out the garbage. This is what I’m good for: running my little life, when I’m not locked away in my room, trying to write about all of the things I’m told I shouldn’t, yet must, and do.


Today’s poem originally appeared in Midway Journal, and appears here today with permission from the poet.


William Reichard is the author of four collections of poetry, including Sin Eater (2010) and This Brightness (2007), both published by Mid-List Press. He is the editor of the anthology American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice (New Village Press, 2011). He lives in Saint Paul, MN.


Editor’s Note: Today’s poem contemplates what it is to be a writer, and William Reichard obviously gets it. If you are being asked to stop writing about the ones you know and love, you are probably doing something right. If you are not writing, there is plenty to do to comprise a life—chores, errands—but what kind of a life is it when you are merely surviving, as opposed to living? Amidst the clarity and logic of today’s prose Reichard breaks into beautiful lyric imagery. In so doing, he lets the reader know what always lies beneath the surface—even of the mundane—when one is a writer.


Want to see more by William Reichard?
William Reichard’s Official Website
Mid-List Press
New Village Press
Knox Writers House
Interview in Literary Magpie

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: REGIE CABICO

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IT’S NOT SO MUCH HIS KISS I RECALL AS HIS VOICE
By Regie Cabico

A shy pebble rippling water. Each phrase
a school of startled ginger fish shimmering
through the telephone line. I’d like to invite
you to my place & immediately I became
a frightened puppy in a tropical rain forest.
Only to my surprise, I was in Brooklyn
reading Lorca in his living room, calmly
sipping tea. He played me Joni Mitchell
crooning the lines he loved & even tried
to sing the high notes. His falsetto cracking
midair as we both laughed. That’s when he
rested a photo album on his lap & pulled
a picture of himself, a young boy swimming
in a Buenos Aires blue reflecting pool. I wanted
to lick the nape of his neck instead said, You’ll
have to teach me how to swim. I’m afraid
of water. That’s when he placed his lips
to mine, our most perfect palates open as we
pulled away to catch our breath.. You have
to be relaxed otherwise you’ll drown. I kiss
him again feeling ribs beneath sweatshirt,
our hearts racing the way a diver freefalls
plunging in a sea of pearls


Today’s poem appears here today with permission from the poet.


Regie Cabico is one of the country’s leading innovators and pioneers of poetry and spoken word having won 3 top prizes in the National Poetry Slams as well as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam. Bust Magazine ranked him in the 100 Men We Love & The Kenyon Review called him the Lady Gaga of Poetry. He received 3 NY Innovative Theater Award nominations and won a 2006 Best Performance Art Production award for his work on Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. Other theater credits include the Hip Hop Theater Festival, The Humana Theater Festival & Dixon Place. He has appeared on two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and NPR’s Snap Judgement. His work is published in over 40 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Spoken Word Revolution & The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He has taught at Urban Word NYC, Poets House, Kundiman, Split This Rock and has been on the faculty of Banff Arts Center’s Spoken Word Program. Mr. Cabico received the Writers for Writers Award for his work with at-risk youth from Poets and Writers. He is former NYU Artist in Residence for Asian Pacific American Studies. He performs throughout the UK and North America & resides in Washington, DC.


Editor’s Note: I had the pleasure of seeing Regie Cabico perform recently at NYC’s louderARTS weekly reading series. He gave one of the most engaging, entertaining, and raw performances I’ve seen—poetry or otherwise. Mr. Cabico rolls up his sleeves and delves into the theater of the real, exploring queer themes and other matters of the human condition, as thoughtful and honest in his humor and wit as with his tenderness. A true performance artist in his own right, Regie Cabico’s words are as riveting on the page as they are displayed before a riveted crowd, his peacock feathers on full display. After his performance, the drowning of today’s poem stayed with me for days. When asked if he had any books for sale he replied, “Nothing for sale online but my body.” The Lady Gaga of poetry indeed, and then some.

For a real treat, watch Regie Cabico perform today’s poem live.


Want to see more by Regie Cabico?
Inspired Word Performance on Youtube
Three poems at EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts
watch Regie Cabico perform “Capturing Fire” live

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JASON MYERS

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HOTEL ORPHEUS
By Jason Myers

Rain, Eurydice, more rain.
It seems these mountains are married
to cold, damp clouds. I’ve known
no sun here, where you are
not. I sit by this window
and peel the skin from a pear.
Darling, I needed to see you
and now I see rain, hotel porn.
Somebody sent chrysanthemums,
some roses, an orchid. They smell
nothing like you. My nose is wasted
on onions and cilantro’s summer noise.
I won’t cry any more. I won’t wake
in the middle of the night and reach
for the phone to call you.
This rain, how it seems to seethe
like water hissing from the lips
of the kettle, begging one more dance
with Darjeeling. I watch the news
of India, a 70-year-old couple killed
in their hotel room. Didn’t Dickinson say
the world was made for lovers?
Well, she died alone and this pear
tastes like salt. O little town
with your shut-down steel factories,
build me a ship, there is a river
I need to cross with waters so dark
dawn looks like night and my own name
is sung on the waves like a curse.


Today’s poem originally appeared in AGNI, and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.


Jason Myers grew up in western Maryland, and graduated from Bennington College. He received his MFA from NYU and has also lived in Berkeley, California and upstate New York. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, he currently lives in Atlanta, where he recently received a Master of Divinity degree from Emory University


Editor’s Note: Don’t look back. The unheeded warning that left Eurydice in Hades and Orpheus destined for his own darkness in the world above. But to be human is to look back, and that is what Jason Myers grapples with and succumbs to in today’s poem.

One of the things I love most about lyric poetry is its concern with the same themes humans have been struggling with since before the invention of the oral—let alone the written—word. We have all looked back, despite our best efforts to restrain ourselves.

Beneath the layers of time, of progress, of modernization, there is little difference between the heart of the musician poet who sought to retrieve his lost love from the depths of the underworld and the heart of the man sitting alone in a hotel room in a steel town. Both men know to their cores what Myers means when he says, “there is a river / I need to cross with waters so dark / dawn looks like night and my own name / is sung on the waves like a curse.”


Want to see more by Jason Myers?
Cortland Review
Conjunctions
B H Journal
Terrain.org