AJ White
AJ White is a poet and educator from north Georgia. He is the winner of the 2023 Fugue Poetry Prize, selected by Kaveh Akbar, and of a 2023 Academy of American Poets University Prize, selected by Tara Betts. His work has also appeared in Boudin, Fugue, Taco Bell Quarterly, and elsewhere. AJ is a doctoral student in English at Binghamton University and lives in New York.
The Suscitation of God
Someone has gathered together the sky—it is being folded like a fitted sheet,
imperfectly, into the bureau of the west.
Someone has dropped pigment into the horizon, the way a pip of blood might leach
into a porridge, or some waxy needles
can be coaxed into a tea. The emptiest vessel speaks the loudest, and the earth is full
of open mouths, but the sky—
and the way the trees bend, the way the river gossips about you—
these things are permissions for a discourse.
And yet one remains perplexed—no one to sit you down and say that’s enough
for now, well done, rest.
It’s just me here, sobering up slowly, day by day, wringing the damp
from my underclothes.
Thinking you have arrived is ensnarement. Thinking you have arrived,
you may never leave out from home.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Image by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
© 2024 Iron Oak Editions
Stay Connected to Our Literary Community. Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Listen:
