prayer that goes: dear god — Blackbird Archive

← v6n1, Spring 2007

then it goes: buttercups.

then it goes: marsh marigolds

with waxy petals that time

he sailed the little boat

with a message stuck

in a film canister glued

to the deck. then it leaps

to watercress salad that time.

then it says i gotta bring this

diction down and not rely

so much on italics. down

so low it sounds country

western. dear god

it goes, and some steel guitar,

reverse the flow of water

and send that little boat

home. it goes:

my son

which is how god answered

why hast thou forsaken

me. then it says

cattails. it says those

cattails that one day

and his hair, the curl

and swirl of it.

religion family language

Diane Seuss

Diane Seuss is Writer-in-Residence at Kalamazoo College. She is the author of the poetry collection It Blows You Hollow (New Issues, 1998). Her poems have been anthologized in Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework (2005), Are You Experienced? Baby Boom Poets at Midlife (2003), and Boomer Girls: Poems by Women from the Baby Boom Generation (1999), all from the University of Iowa Press. Seuss’s work has recently appeared in The North American Review , Indiana Review , Cimarron Review , and The Georgia Review .