Steve Brisendine Contemplates Giving God A Free Shot, The Angel-Slain Firstborn, And Thickets Of Fingernails

edge of evening, edge of storm

everything is just short

of something

in this moment: almost

dusk,

almost rain, almost time

to go

home, almost tempting 

to grab that almost-wet

flagpole 

and say 

hey God,

free shot

Sahara haze: a plague of 2020

breathe in bone-remnants

of the angel-slain firstborn;

what blood can cover

our own doorposts, ward away

one more chastisement for who

we have failed to be?

the discarded of this land

cry out from dark soil;

we who exist between dust

and dust must give an answer

Unsafe

In which Erato, muse of love poetry, admonishes her followers:

Enough.

Still your trembling

(from need

or

exhaustion)

pens.

Come out from

(on one side)

your tangled burnings and yearnings,

long looks and looks of longing,

(and on the other)

your thickets of friction and fingernails,

shudders and satiated silence.

Stand here,

on the bridge between yielding 

yes

and claiming 

Yes,

and do 

not

breathe, 

for not even air can be steady here,

where all is slick and shaking

and everything rests upon

one

point,

thin as two layers

of skin

(and only one 

of those

yours).

Wait.

Look down.

Now write.

Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist and recovering journalist living and working in Mission, KS. He is the author of two collections from Spartan Press: The Words We Do Not Have (2021) and the upcoming Salt Holds No Secret But This (2022). He was a finalist for the 2021 Derick Burleson Poetry Prize.