So Call it Grace

The first plea-

sure was,

someday, a man

amen a boy be-

fore this boy

without form

yet here god-

send said god—

send me an-

other portion

of sky ’ipelíikt

turns to bruise

pressed to our

skin now skinn-

-ed touch us

into extinction

where we are a-

live, so say it:

live—no out-

live any god

salvaged by

the image a-

flame trapped

in the night

of the throat

like a gun-

lit glimmer

in a room sh-

redded with

our pleas-

                     ure.

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“What language offers of us on the page is this tension in knowing that the body’s fractal histories often coalesce. But perhaps this poem—despite its persistent grammar of grief—wants to insist on a kind of living grace, a quieted room to be filled with and transformed into the scorch of our shared pleasure.”
—Michael Wasson