Thank you to Editor in Chief Nadia Gerassimenko for nominating my poem “Risen” for a Pushcart Prize and including it in her tour de force (and fun and interactive!) compilation of poetry, short prose, visual art, and other mixed-media creations that is issue 7 of Moonchild Magazine!
View in landscape on a tablet or computer screen to appreciate the full experience.
Concerning the Delay of My Self-Immolation
“Ich kenne nichts Ärmeres
Unter der Sonn’, als euch Götter!”
“I know nothing poorer
Under the sun than you gods!” ~ from J. W. von Goethe’s “Prometheus”
when i sacrifice myself
as a gift to my fellow humans
i promise it will be for nothing
so hackneyed as to protest
some hypoxic septuagenarian
hunched on a mountaintop
mistaking every garish tendril
to wisp from his head
for a well-honed lightning bolt
not that i imagine
there’s any portion of my no-longer-
combustible flesh i might set
upon the balance that could be
tendered for passage to Elysium
but you can believe i’d pluck my own eyes
from their sockets send
the fabrics from my padded scaffold back
to China & traipse forever a blind
naked-as-a-mole-rat gnome in the garden of
unscented flowers if the stygian prophecies
were to divine any semblance of purpose
in chaining my corpse to the cliff face
& though these desiccating seasons
have yet to assemble
me into fuel for Helios’ pyre
if ever my splitting spurs should cease
to cry out dragon’s blood
i will blaze
with the ire of a rebel Titan—
my ashes will salt the gods’ tears
lapping the west’s black edge
“Concerning the Delay of My Self-Immolation” was published by editor Robert L. Penick in the 2019 edition of the print journal Ristau: A Journal of Being, and now enjoys the terrific honor of being nominated for a Pushcart Prize, for which I am ecstatically grateful!
SLHARPERPOETRY 