Tony Nicholas Clark
Summer 2024 | Poetry
We Try
a tenderness rummages through the shells
of what we once were – children who laughed,
danced, hooted, and hollered with no rhyme or reason.
daily we let our souls ring its bells
yearning to revive what was once joy before we crashed,
frantic, bruised, and upended by life’s slick treason.
our phantom smiles offer enough reason to hope,
that perhaps we’ll delight once more in the mundane,
ecstatic, healed, and removed from the slippery slope.
we call upon the higher and beyond just to cope,
and maybe, to us, they’re doing the same,
eager to shower us in comfort like a cloak.
Tony Nicholas Clark (he/him) is a black, trans writer from the Philly suburbs. His work can be found in ‘Short Edition’, ‘Perceptions Journal’, ‘The Monmouth Review’, and ‘Call & Response Journal, vol. 1’ among others. He is a Summer ‘24 Poet-Author Fellow for the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He holds an M.A in English & M.F.A in Creative Writing from Monmouth University.