We’re called to do
Tag Archives: poetry
Our friend on chess
In other games you win points or money
but here you just lose pieces
The writer devolves
Scratchings
Clawings
The bore
Death goes on and on,
blabbing about his adventures
How a tragedy unfolds
Like light off a river
through the beams of a bridge
Till all that’s left is the salt
I imagine Purgatory to be
a purification not by fire, but by tears –
that being the proper response
to all our failures to love
Lettuce and bread
And rockets and bombs
Jesus waits and wonders
Oh why, human heart
do you sleep on the floor?
What victory looks like
Hey, you’re still standing aren’t you?
You’re still trying?
Fever dream
Maybe this was the real work, the
elbow-bent nighttime writing,
mapping the river that pierces the wood
Utrecht Journal 