PoetryMagazine.com Editor's Featured Poet Evie Shockley

Evie Shockley
Page 3

london bridge

deep river my home is over jordan
entering the cathedral i hear these (re)moving words
echoing off the tear-stained glass windows
people from a hundred nations wet with london

rain   drip from their hair and umbrellas   pooling
into puddles   the spit of fifty foreign tongues
visa’d by christ   the choir mouths open   a blues
estuary   stems the vernacular tide   de-negros de notes
refrains from a spiritual funk   imports

my pass(ed) re-fines the raw product the no of my
yesterday onyx pearls lost overboard what the

hell could not hold   so many   in the same boat
othello came to england during elizabeth’s reign
moored to the stage the noblest of savages   he
entertained the idea of robeson   st. paul’s

immaculate reception the thames not an ole man to
sing home about but on its shores the solid

opulence of the anglican church   a veritable
vault of safety from enemy bombs   starvation   sale
excommunication the greatest threat   not to be
refused the shelter of its thick stone walls

just swallow this wafer of state and be swallowed
open your heart to the god of gladstone dis-
raeli and churchill   must jesus bear this cross alone
devil on the deep blue sea   just one more bon voyage
across the atlantic    the pacific   the world awaits   you’d
not have thought death had unhomed so many

From a half-red sea; initially published in Hambone.

my life as china

i was imported : : i was soft in the hills where they found me : : shining in a private dark : : i absorbed fire and became fact : : i was fragile : : i incorporated burnt cattle bones’ powdered remains : : ashes to ashes : : i was baptized in heat : : fed on destruction : : i was not destroyer : : was not destroyed : : i vitrified : : none of me was the same : : i was many : : how can i say this : : i was domesticated : : trusted : : treasured : : i was translucent but not clear : : put me to your lips : : i will not give : : i will give you what you have given me

Published in Talisman.