Michael D. Snediker
Winter 2022 Edition / Poetry
Pilgrim of Elation
Michael D. Snediker
PILGRIM OF ELATION
Moon gate, master of nets.
A prow of grace made odd in the sheep’s
far-be-it.
Some remove from
the trellis you
may find an enfolding
clericism unremarked.
*
The scarecrows leaned & loafed, bribing
the witch elm. Polyphony dogwoods awaiting
the evidence of absence at bay.
*
The beekeeper spans his softness when the pilgrims
return with their pensive enameled hands.
*
The change came about this way: a depleted
tutelary lozenged in concentration.
Content in
the decorative sense.
*
Somewhere in this mislaid geometric
style brood six pheasant mysteries.
Pounce stick & palette.
Their customary gangplank of
spooling shadow
darting around like syllables startled
blue into sumach.
*
But I knew, I thought, I stray.
*
An amateur estranger
in the draft. The discretion
of larceny & splurge.
My last duel mishap, angled
evening gardens in loops of bale—
a mob at last
our spoiling
inference couldn’t cloy.
His final word withdrawn was green, a loose botany in
the weeding sleeve of description.
Michael D Snediker is the author of two books of poems, The New York Editions (Fordham University Press 2017, winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize) and The Apartment of Tragic Appliances (Punctum Books 2014, Lambda finalist for Best Gay Poetry). He's also the author of Contingent Figure: Chronic Pain & Queer Embodiment (U.Minnesota Press, 2021) and Queer Optimism: Lyric Personhood & Other Felicitous Persuasions (U.Minnesota Press, 2009). Poems from his most recent poetry manuscript, Meanderest (a finalist for both the Test Site Poetry Series and Tupelo Press's open reading period), have appeared in Blazing Stadium, Interim, and Prelude. He is the recipient of multiple residencies at Yaddo and the James Merrill House, and is Professor of American Literature & Poetics at the University of Houston.