mothers, hunters, ghosts

G.C. Waldrep

 

where place & hoof
come green embankment
you will not die
washing backward
to this holy node, strips
of breath tied
into the prey’s mane
gloss the mill’s pulse
hope for some ceiled milk
a bressumer draped
with vague crepe of act
& act’s trine musk
bandage me, meat-lens
at field’s sift
the red deer shed
a glebous lung
the moistened beg-mask
preaching infirmity
footpaths a Klee
across textile’s glowy wing
the light’s blistered
stomach-lisp
slakes vein & canter
if this were filmed
you would see the night’s
cartilage adjust
to my pelt’s deft weight

 

 

Gently, as Music Tests the Soul

G.C. Waldrep

 

pressing through what
color remands, the eye is never
large enough

touch the map to the soul
as a scroll of honey
 

I have lost my staff
madness take it, as a cinch
 

feel mercy’s ghost-
path, come now

coal’s embassy, a polled fire

 

every world,
when placed towards day
 

that fragrant stanchion
in parliamentary recompense

 

 

Noone Falls

G.C. Waldrep

 

resin-repeater, the script
percolates
into gasps & flashes

                          huddles
in the pine-depths,
its mission to record
            every tenant-noun

& the music of earthly
illness, sapling
that sends its lunar nerve

right through
my lungs’ giddy cadence

 
 

*

       (& you, parasite
       or symbiont,
       what do you record,

       to whom
       address this pore—)

 
 

G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are a long poem, “Testament” (BOA Editions, 2015), and a chapbook, “Susquehanna” (Omnidawn, 2013). With Joshua Corey he edited “The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral” (Ahsahta, 2012). He lives in Lewisburg, Pa., where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.