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His final word withdrawn was green, a loose botany in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.

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