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Stealing Hymnals from the Choir
Winner of the 2010 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize. STEALING HYMNALS FROM THE CHOIR is a collection of poems about the outward pull of the forces of history, the inward tugging of the human heart, and the intersection of the two. Its subjects are some of the impersonal events that have swept us into the present day, and the precarious intimacies that try to steady us and give us strength to endure within that present. It is a book about mourning, meditation, and finally the inevitability of celebration.
74 pages, Paperback
First published August 10, 2010
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July 5, 2012
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:
SHIPWRECK SURVIVORS MARCH ALONG THE COASTLINE
Three days, twelve days, a lifetime.
To starboard, the sea that didn’t bury us.
To port, a land that won’t let us pierce it.
Sand beats our shoes with microscopic hammers
until the leather flies in strips. The sun
doesn’t search hard enough for clouds to hide it.
We take turns carrying the child on our backs.
For food, cousins of plums that hang on bushes
like the crooked scarecrows of beetles.
Cook samples one and expires on the spot.
Meanwhile, crimson figs stand in trees
whose trunks grow an assortment of cutlery.
The birds that seem to have no song
eat these and stare.
For water, inland springs...only half a day’s march.
One of us throws his face down into them,
does not rise. Perhaps he is trying to catch
a gudgeon with his teeth. Perhaps he will;
we leave him to his luck.
At night, we make fires to keep back
the animals that snarl or laugh from the brush,
or both. We throw on buttons, fallen teeth,
the ship’s log, sextant, stewpot.
To atone for the lack of wood, the carpenter
throws himself on.
Day sixteen: a sail on the horizon.
We hoist the child to our shoulders, who
tries to do a dance. The sail immediately
slips away, as if it’s seen better.
That afternoon, mollusks are exposed
by the tide. When we lunge, they
burrow into the sand like the tongues
of repentant gossips. We strike at the beach,
whose enormous face cannot feel it.
We march. No crossroads, no reckoning, no end.
The child is dead, but we have forgotten
how not to carry him. The captain
walks into the water until he can float his hat.
The second mate dashes himself on the rocks.
Soon it’s just the bosun and I. He climbs
invisible rigging to the sky,
reaches a hand for me to follow him.
STEALING HYMNALS FROM THE CHOIR
These are the famished in spirit.
They steal tomatoes from where the armless man
made his garden, sharpen their knives
on the gravestones of martyrs.
Be slow to invite them to your table.
They will scrape salt into their pockets,
hide the soup tureens in their laps,
use tweezers to serve your grandfather his salad.
They steal hymnals from the choir,
blood from blood banks. Last week at midnight,
one dug a sapling from the schoolyard,
where now the children vanish as they run.
These are the famished in spirit.
They sweep the world of its joy, using your broom
and mine. You will not know them by their fruits,
for they will have eaten them out of rancor and fear.
SHIPWRECK SURVIVORS MARCH ALONG THE COASTLINE
Three days, twelve days, a lifetime.
To starboard, the sea that didn’t bury us.
To port, a land that won’t let us pierce it.
Sand beats our shoes with microscopic hammers
until the leather flies in strips. The sun
doesn’t search hard enough for clouds to hide it.
We take turns carrying the child on our backs.
For food, cousins of plums that hang on bushes
like the crooked scarecrows of beetles.
Cook samples one and expires on the spot.
Meanwhile, crimson figs stand in trees
whose trunks grow an assortment of cutlery.
The birds that seem to have no song
eat these and stare.
For water, inland springs...only half a day’s march.
One of us throws his face down into them,
does not rise. Perhaps he is trying to catch
a gudgeon with his teeth. Perhaps he will;
we leave him to his luck.
At night, we make fires to keep back
the animals that snarl or laugh from the brush,
or both. We throw on buttons, fallen teeth,
the ship’s log, sextant, stewpot.
To atone for the lack of wood, the carpenter
throws himself on.
Day sixteen: a sail on the horizon.
We hoist the child to our shoulders, who
tries to do a dance. The sail immediately
slips away, as if it’s seen better.
That afternoon, mollusks are exposed
by the tide. When we lunge, they
burrow into the sand like the tongues
of repentant gossips. We strike at the beach,
whose enormous face cannot feel it.
We march. No crossroads, no reckoning, no end.
The child is dead, but we have forgotten
how not to carry him. The captain
walks into the water until he can float his hat.
The second mate dashes himself on the rocks.
Soon it’s just the bosun and I. He climbs
invisible rigging to the sky,
reaches a hand for me to follow him.
STEALING HYMNALS FROM THE CHOIR
These are the famished in spirit.
They steal tomatoes from where the armless man
made his garden, sharpen their knives
on the gravestones of martyrs.
Be slow to invite them to your table.
They will scrape salt into their pockets,
hide the soup tureens in their laps,
use tweezers to serve your grandfather his salad.
They steal hymnals from the choir,
blood from blood banks. Last week at midnight,
one dug a sapling from the schoolyard,
where now the children vanish as they run.
These are the famished in spirit.
They sweep the world of its joy, using your broom
and mine. You will not know them by their fruits,
for they will have eaten them out of rancor and fear.
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