Before the Sermons (Reprise)
Before a blossom shoots
into its heavier, sturdier seed
I was sure to notice or
comment on the
positions of his hair,
well before the chaplain’s gown
dried over his bones. Off
antiqued leaves, the lungs,
his engines, begun a reconstruction
of the tongue for its modern day
uses. Time was cornered into a lonely
moment; a moment we all shared
or remembered from another first
time. This is all that’s left—You &
I together within dense shells, scurrying
by the faces as fire does
by smoke. Although precious,
we could’ve removed the fingerprint,
your fingerprint, to see how
we related; or if we could at all.
Again and Again I recalled a rose, but
nonetheless I’m still mistaken.
After all of this was left
for only us, or before all
of this has left us all alone
we need to lend a separate
vow to the fisherman
who lived and live:
the sea will lose its scent.
Engines Above Our Yard
Minute from minute, fire
again cleaves fire. It ages
all it builds; never
to vanish
absolutely
(but will, in time ease)
into concluding echoes
we imagine to never
understand. I wonder
can this room, plunged with light
heavy enough to bury our dust,
be here only to unwind us?
I lean each eyelid toward the shadows,
waiting on thudding voices to appear.
Providence (Freedom Has Come and Gone)
People talk to heaven
like it's glass; made
to mend and bend us
all at once. Can you hear
Him again? He’s working
on our own free
will.
Again we built
another wild ghost;
make us free
you from ourselves.
There is there,
and is that all?
Funerals, then funeral?
Funerals echo
(catastrophe)
toward
us all.
We're made
born to vanish
like the Maldives
below the Indian.
Christopher Suda is currently a twenty-four year old undergraduate at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His poetry has been published in Shot Glass Journal, blazeVOX, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Aura Literary Review, Poetry Super Highway, and other literary journals. He is a musician involved in three current music projects: Philos Moore (singer-songwriter), In Snow (Instrumental), and Loveislight (Experimental Hip-Hop).