mud’s tapered thrust of gasoline: of
piston: is taken from: a painting inside
the cave the chest makes, only older than that:
applewood: to ashes: slakes a spectrum
through which
penance myrtles, always the hermeticist:
we sew suits for this, block the river
from its limestone resurrection: Tell me a story:
we were far away, all of us, & pressed
to powder, as if by thumbs, the way an oven
door, opened, seems to put a face to suffering:
come the scientists:
there is something to be said for motion,
geography’s Sunday supplement:
burnt to embassy:
stem from wire unspiraling, the mourners
rising ecstatic, upward from their benches:
bone messenger:
we model how they lived, their cookfires
& crude implements, I mean
they loved their children, we conclude, &
God is a machine through which
the soul keeps driving: (linen rheostat):
(brumal radiance): Geiger of tongue, sweat’s
candle pearls in sequence:
G. C. WALDREP‘s most recent collection, Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA Editions, 2011), was a collaborative project with the poet John Gallaher. More recent, solo work appears in New American Writing, Boulevard, Threepenny Review, and other journals. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pa., where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.
- On Fasting - January 1, 2013