Watch the Lame Beast Turn — Blackbird Archive

← v19n2, Fall 2020

it must be pure, but not a proof—

a glass waiting, tied as fret-lens

to the field’s scabby haunch—

without war comes

nothing burning, shadow-leavens

in their tollhouses

lean against that spacious drum—

its resinous anthem—

contagious, as every act affirms—

in the eaves & at the altar, the /I/

bears a pilot’s breath

taken deep through clear flame—

house-to-house go

the ripe kings with their candles—

I set the traps—

at vespers, for the ferrous dead—

religion war mortality

G.C. Waldrep

G.C. Waldrep’s newest books are the long poem, Testament (BOA Editions, 2015), and the chapbook, Susquehanna (Omnidawn, 2013). He co-edited The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta Press, 2012) with poet Joshua Corey. His poems have appeared in Poetry , New England Review , Ploughshares , and elsewhere. He lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania., where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and serves as an Editor at Large for The Kenyon Review.