Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/aOAXLjZx17g) 3.10.2021.
Préludes Fragiles
for Calum Carmichael
i
Whose succor dying death is
Along corpse-roads the copses
Sway in the wind’s own lyke-way
Requiem the shattered clay
ii
Night-lipped the map catches fire
Gallows the drubbed tongues/choir
The miserare of clast
Gospel the heaved flesh’s last
iii
The road wrecks pinion and bone
Fugitives clasped soul and stone
Who hauls the body’s tamped flames
Knows remaining from remains
Author about Himself: I am a permanently disabled LGBTQIA+ poet and composer, born in London, England and currently living in Long Beach, CA. Chester Creek Press has published 3 limited-edition letterpress poetry chapbooks, with illustrations by the hyper-realist painter Anthony Mastromatteo. My poems have appeared widely in literary magazines including Agenda (UK), Stand (UK), The Interpreter's House (UK), Shenandoah, Salmagundi, Denver Quarterly, CutBank, Southern Humanities Review, and Green Mountains Review. Recent poems appeared this summer in The Laurel Review, Fahmidan Journal, Goat's Milk Magazine, Sledgehammer Lit, and Bloom Magazine. I have received residency fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell, and earned an MFA from Cornell University, where I studied with A. R. Ammons and Robert Morgan. My music, as "Lost in Stars," has been featured by The Los Angeles Times, NPR/PRI program "Echoes," KCRW (LA NPR station), Entertainment Weekly, NYLON magazine, XLR8R, Insomniac, Earmilk, and many other venues.
