Poetry

Chaun Ballard is the author of the chapbook Flight, winner of the 2018 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. Born in St. Louis, he is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Alaska and resides in Anchorage.

American Standard Version

by Chaun Ballard
(1)
1 o Lord, how we must break Your heart
we wafer & grape juice into blood.
while my acupuncturist dots my flesh
lungs. 4 but this, i promise, is not a
whoever eats of this bread & drinks of this
sin. 6 now that we have arrived here, sell me no
in Your ordinance. in judgment,
at the cruiser’s hum. 7 my acupuncturist
9 i have told him nothing of trauma—how
terrorized. 11 how, in my neighborhood,
the officer eyeballed me head to toe,
for his mistake. 13 i know You never meant
daily. 2 we arrive to consume Your brokenness:
3 lately, You weep from tear gas canisters
like the via dolorosa when looking for my
prayer about myself. 5 i am the body of peoples.
cup in an unworthy manner, You said, is guilty of
silence—a calf of gold. i am not perfect
my body dies & dies until my death is expected
knows the body. 8 my lungs are said to store fear.
my lords are terrorists. 10 how we walk to polls
a cruiser crossed my path twice. i became catholic.
did not use his blinker once. 12 a camera lens died
for silence to become Your gift of language.
14 what my leader smolders between the pyres,
Your Word is a house my body runs to seek
our tongues, is not for communion’s sake. if
refuge, Your church is often a house i find none.
(2)
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