Matthew Henriksen

 

 

Need

 

How to again turn crow
sturgeon, crow of sparrow,
sparrow spun from light
and seeded, song realized.

Breast known as singer, for now
I’ll grace the pendants with
my most ordinary leaf, a stone effaced
with want, a long look over fieldless
fields, the wilting no no not again,
the phrase a collapsed face configured.

 

The Faith

 

God slept in the galleys and woke in the Streets of Paradise,
                    then prefabricated rapture to deliver the distressed. 

Whispered alleys dawned on the hill-ruptured
                                sunset of redress an admonished coin sang.

       And the body creamed neat incisions across the canyon's ear,
such as when the dogs are sick.

                                             Distressed birds
                                             hazarding grace,
                                             stopped to walk.

 

Prayer

 

         In a field of yes, a hole amid the asters,
                                a crow feels the weight of asking.
                                                               A crow feels ageless.
 
                                             The faster spins this stillness,
                 the stiller frame a crow’s burgeoning nonsense
offers the marrow of cloudlessness burning stones.

 

 

 

Paradise

 

No release,

          just a long ache gone dull,

a loop in sorrow like a skipping rope to cry along with.

 

And then with distance

a warping of the flesh along the spine

that bound my hand to her.

Torn lantern in her waist
I kiss in twos,

a listless longing for

bindings that cease the slipping of

gashed infinity. 

 

A vision undone bleeds into the ear.

Mother blister of the magnitudes
registers relief with the plucking.