Preparations for the Kingdom
- Preparations for the Kingdom
All night you must be carrying something—brushhooks? bent ladders? the dredging enginesof your hands?—or else casting a line out along
the inner banks of my flesh for whatever creosotefin-flash muddies the shallows I'll never know.You are interior's interior, a darkness the darkness
hides behind and yet here I am with my haphazardlean-to, twig and raveled twine, heart's haywiredcompass and the thinnest moth-ravaged ration of bliss
to shelter you as if, in any firestorm in any wintertundra in any failing or fallen empire, I could— [End Page 14]
Elyse Fenton
Elyse Fenton is the author of the poetry collection Clamor. She has published work in American Poetry Review, Pleiades, Best New Poets, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
