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Amen rises amid pales splits wood as a bay when a quest been found & carries light to dark
& light again
I wait for ardent tongues to edify a formicary & quake with accent rhythm & intonation
as amen rises a life of needles joined haphazardly emerges as words & sentences like
language I cannot speak
cannot join in either by revelation by knowledge by prophecy or by doctrine
as I am spelt in plain interpretation & will not break root truth for fervent affection
& I war with the swyke that feir ant freoly ys to fyke
who comes through denses of canebrake through treelines & through fields heavy grazed
rising mounds of clay for he is endowed by power of bite & sting a second blessing of venom
as a hoard of workers secure privative waters wash a triune body buried & risen again
I migrate to the mind devour as an instar rising above roots & lay safe in a thin state of grace
in a bramble bed in an open pasture lined with myrtle oak & pine & I listen to communion
to spirit baptism to faith so uttered the divine becomes man a flesh pierced with conception.
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We threw roots into fire until we were derelict ash & dust memory of a begotten trough filled with the spirit & skeps of char until our intarissable woods exhaust into an advent of pastures guild understory remnants once covered with old growth & then cut away circles of time widened on carse narrowed on hill the native sadness tracked until shotguns & dogtrots came & kept fast unto a sustenance deep & hard faith until desire removed the pith & ploughed with jagged blades of blood & tars hot with release & so long kept a husband & a son without a title to land so the absent whelp of an intemperate memory claimed the maternal soil the fields so diligently crafted in the tracks of the dummy line that led our fathers here to pines now lost. |
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Isn’t earth swallowing enough
a land of hanging surrounds the inheritance of fields given wells accept offerings
men as fallen loss
& I have not wronged my soil have fed the steer I slaughter & have scaled the bass I eat
have heard messages of the end of time as native-born must
& they come into crowns offering aroma pleasing to the Lord & my firstborn daughter
a partaker of fullness
dwells ground & settled & lifts bark of magnolia hope not to be moved away
fulfills a dispensation of grace bares a gospel tongue
as her words will claim an inheritance from soil & like wayward her words
soar over the woods
merciful to her as kudzu spreading far from their root crown & cleave to a house
on whence they art fallen come joined together
& even the trees rejoice & say Since her words gather no feller is come against them
she lays down divine
for through the heartwood of our house she ascends into heaven offers word as wilderness
& her glory makes old bareness
picturesque & she tufts with a claim of native vine a feudal tower of her peoples remnant.
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Hunger raddles the body & above tree lined pastures spans open consuming memory like an afterbirth full of nutrients & black shadows fall in circles of stagnant horizon as a communal body in the sky waits & last breath pushes against an empty body fallen to the ground mercifully lost in a bed of mulch so that mercy is not unknown or forgotten in a prodigal & savage land on sweet birch & swamp maple buzzards perched in insolent readiness ravishing & turbulent bent into a lowing pain lo & behold they stand on high branches & seize darkness break from the shoulder heavy born remnants & talons bring salvation from perishing as evenfall would bring coyotes from hills far away hanging on the tree line as death humbles the head even the born predator of terrible eyes of floppy tongue & of outstretched limbs of hooves soft from the belly. |
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Among bales I crawl through bahia & rye breathing the evening dust through long bores of clarity open sky I fear not nothing raised up by four corners of a common evil & a weight of cold I fear nothing not torments of hope nor the thing with feathers that perches in the soul leaves remnants pelt & bone I fear not because I know no one puts new cut hay into old barns else new cut hay bursts into fire hay is burnt barn is ruined so new hay must be cured in new cut pastures must suffer shed life & hope must be put away hazy for breath loose in a dry winter of stubble & a crack of sheath moults under a rough cut joist I fear not the remnant of this other coming to crawl out of his skin. |
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BRENT HOUSE grew up in Necaise, Mississippi, where he raised cattle and watermelons on the family farm. His poems have appeared online in Free Verse, H_NGM_N, Typo, storySouth, Anti-, and elsewhere. He is a contributing editor for The Tusculum Review. |
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