Turkey Gospel
Posted by Alysia Harris | Filed under Poetry, Print
by Garrett Carey and Alysia Harris
When you are all out of feathers
dust the glory and pray
quietly, young pagan, young
starlight drunken wanderer. Gaze,
head up in haughty silence
or simple humility for all that is above you,
intangible and collecting time.
Young believer, walk, but most importantly
fall and wallow in your faith like a mudbath.
Wear it like regret and then wear it like acceptance,
chameleon in your bare skin that you are,
hate the bridge you built
under your feet but walk it.
Dream carpenter,
splinter prick your tired soles
with wood rotting jealously
in the perfume of patience.
Kick the morning up from your heel
with all that dirt and let it
settle behind you, never
turn your head, never look with cobbled eyes for everything past
the blinks you wish you had the courage to muster
– be comfortable in the darkness
but do not grow cold to a fire.
Do not grow old. Do not go hungry.
Go on your tip toes, or go on your knees
but God forbid, do not go staggering.
This need, this desire, will combust
in you with wanton fervor.
Do not be consumed, do not
let it go. Swallow
the reckless, blundering luster.
Smile to thread the starlight through your teeth
and laugh at the irony. Resemble what you seek.
Seek the truth of the shortest distance
jumping out of your skin—trying to be
an untilted axis to the world’s arabesque
a lightening rod in an open field
of crooked blades of grass, amputee umbrellas
and limp handshakes.
Be as straight as an arrow for you know how to quiver.
Be aligned with every right angle and sympathetic to every fallen one.
Be a stone’s throw to the stained glass sky
and leave a mark wherever you land. Do not
be forgotten.
Do not forget me. Do not forget me.
Whisper a sandstorm and count
the tiny promises that stick to the wind.
Find your way back across the swollen, pregnant
river Styx. I’ll be waiting.
Sew me a pair of bone-made wings
I’m itching to fly on their failures.
