Blackbird Archive
← v13n1, Spring 2014
Poetry · Volume 13, Number 1

Of Religion

F. Daniel Rzicznek

Each being: an instrument of His?

The herons chase minnows at

His behest? The dog fights

his new collar (one strap

behind the ears, loop around nose)

to teach us some new tricks

regarding anger and patience?

Consider this our world’s center:

roiling, balled-up mass of

tentacle upon tentacle, a sideways

globe-sized eye—

~

The second before the gunman

makes his intentions believable:

there—that face—no happiness.

Understanding is nothing more

than the brain at the middle of it

all, peacefully asleep.

Are we, then, the dream?

religionviolencespirituality
F. Daniel Rzicznek

F. Daniel Rzicznek is the author of two poetry collections, Divination Machine (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2009) and Neck of the World (Utah State University Press, 2007), as well as two chapbooks, Vine River Hermitage (Cooper Dillon Books, 2011) and Cloud Tablets (Kent State University Press, 2006). His poetry has appeared in Boston Review , The New Republic , Orion , Mississippi Review , Hotel Amerika , and Shenandoah . Rzicznek teaches writing at Bowling Green State University and is coeditor (with Gary L. McDowell) of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). Photo by F. Daniel Rzicznek