So Call it Grace
The first plea-
sure was,
someday, a man
amen a boy be-
fore this boy
without form
yet here god-
send said god—
send me an-
other portion
of sky ’ipelíikt
turns to bruise
pressed to our
skin now skinn-
-ed touch us
into extinction
where we are a-
live, so say it:
live—no out-
live any god
salvaged by
the image a-
flame trapped
in the night
of the throat
like a gun-
lit glimmer
in a room sh-
redded with
our pleas-
ure.
Copyright © 2020 by Michael Wasson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 18, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
“What language offers of us on the page is this tension in knowing that the body’s fractal histories often coalesce. But perhaps this poem—despite its persistent grammar of grief—wants to insist on a kind of living grace, a quieted room to be filled with and transformed into the scorch of our shared pleasure.”
—Michael Wasson
Michael Wasson
Michael Wasson is Nimíipuu from the Nez Perce Reservation in Lenore, Idaho. He earned a BA from Lewis-Clark State College and an MFA from Oregon State University.