Traci Brimhall | Poetry
Offer firewood, strike up a flame. You won’t
get anything out of him while he’s
shivering. What you want is the statuesque
gesture of confidence, the clarity
derived from a place at the deity’s
right hand. Keep the coercion to a minimum
when wrestling with a spiritually
disheveled higher being. Your position
can sour, leaving you with nothing but
pine needles in your hands. Ask
the most urgent questions first: why
are armies, and is it malignant, and who
keeps tabs on the status of the platypus?
Remember information is secondary
to your purpose. The voice matters most:
that melody can repair all the torn pages
but first you have to recognize what you’ve caught
in your own human hands, on an ordinary
city street, in the middle of March.
poetry from NER 40.4 (2019)
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