‘A Death Ritual’ charts my progress through a prolonged period of severe depression and out again, a process which I came to think of as coming back to life. The sequence is an imitation of C A Conrad. I chose Conrad because I felt drawn to their magical-poetical principles of ritual healing, and their direct and confronting style. 

 

'GO OUT AND PICK WILDFLOWERS FOR ART' was published in The White Review Online, and can be read here. 'I feel so sorry for poetry' was published on The Osmosis Press Blog, and can be read here. 'I want to be worshiped, you know, like a god' was published in Butcher's Dog, read it below.

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I want to be worshiped, you know, like a god

 

this poem has a curse on it

whoever reads it will die

                                       happily

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our elbows like two lemons

at a birthday party

hip hip hooray

red flame on the tip of each

hair of my body

falling away

into the glorious blaze

of a positively

enlightened world

    that has stopped asking why

    I’m not better yet

 

    be more sorry than you are

 

the storm

spanking the mountains

raw

 

tell it

 

I never wanted a childhood

anyway