Joshua Kryah was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was a Schaeffer Fellow in poetry. His first collection of poems, Glean (2007), won the 2005 Nightboat Books Poetry Prize judged by Donald Revell. His poems have […]
Acquit me, make me purblind, unbloomed, a thing that, when aroused, remains dormant, unused, none among many. As the bulb that persists within its sullen, despondent mood, alive, but no more, no better than some kind of senseless meat. I turn away but wherever I turn I encounter the same soft refrain— I did not […]
Breathbloom, the resurrection lily spent on its stem, the pale throat thrown back announcing—what? Behold, all at once, the flesh-like knot undone, each petal released, their beauty un- mistakable and already gone. ~ I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered. ~ How then explain the resilience of any sacrifice, when your […]
Provocation, voicelet, what moves in me awaits credulity, a torn sheet in which to wrap its weight. Solicitous attendant, o pilgrim, from the charnel house you must transpire, a shudder, a complaint. ~ What stirs is not ancestry. Nor the inception of any one blood. But the insistence to wake, to bear witness, comes as […]
Without regret, leave. Or wait for water to collect and overwhelm any evidence or your ever having been here. There is no other way. We lift ourselves beyond the casualties of what came before (the flood, the swollen river, its overrunning), and kneel, enclosed, in a departure of sorts, now that each body has been […]
1 [call: Clare] Clabbered, the sky shut with clouds, leaden and various, an inclement orthography of wind and rain, suthering through the fen, where the will-o-wisp lights its dusky lantern, honey fungus or ball lightning, the supposed source of all my wonderment, what keeps me rummaging, driven from field to field, among the furze-light— your […]