Everywhere, god
in parcels
the land
outstretched
on which he has cast
his eyes—
speculating a love
of forsythia
once
accumulated:
sanctuary
evidentiary
heaven a
prayer cast
for property
juridical self
possession
a pilgrimage
perpetual
directionality
disturbed &
wild nightshade
hinged
at the neck
in wait //
For if a slave
can have a country
in this world
it is through petitions
one perpetual exercise
from cradle
to grave
in objects:
worship
exploration:
by force
we commune
with god
pray the assembly
find the prayer
reasonable
tease ritual
out of record
catch
the lineaments
of wrath
like imitative animals
we keep god
where
we can see him
we extirpate the black
birds—as if to say
stay, try and stay //
Here lies the prayer
of twelve honest
men
crisis of
accumulation
forgetting
prayers
that never
register
the failure
that we stay
some other
public
but our debts
stay bad
we keep buying
another song
instruments
not of speculation
but of spirit
pastored
in wild green
born in
the charismata
of spirit &
air that aria
god not in parcels
but in porous
sky //
Makshya Tolbert (she & they) is a poet living in the spaces between blk memory and ecological possibility. She has recently published poetry in Narrative Magazine, Ran Off With The Star Bassoon, Alluvia Magazine, and The Night Heron Barks. She has poetry and essays forthcoming in Emergence Magazine and Art Papers. Makshya is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing Program. In her free time, she is elsewhere—where Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. calls ‘that physical or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe.’