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  • As Flesh Made New Through Burning
  • G. C. Waldrep (bio)

The gentle tremor that has begun now in my left hand, between thumb and forefinger, is not history. Its seed lies buried deep in sleep, in the neurochemistry of sleep which traces its faint salt patterns on the stone of my soul. Stone of my soul, the formal world is alive with the drained pool’s bracketing moss, with insect life, with the toadflax and orpine, those useful entities that remind us how much of a wall the heart may come to conduct, to encompass and consume. I think of the tremor in my hand as a gentle song, a new hymn my body has begun. There’s a single cookfire on the open plain; a single eye tends it— childhood and childhood’s memories of childhood, inspiraling. The tremor, the hymn in the hand knows nothing of either fire or eye and does not care. Song has no compassion because through song compassion is woven from disparate threads. My home was a wall, for a little while; I suckled there, I brought the hand out of its glass case in the moonlight. I will give theethe treasures of darkness, I read as the palm spasmed, slow gimel of praise at 36,000 feet. And the stray stone takes its due place in the wall, to mete out possession or else keep graves from spilling into the paths of the living. I feel the cold wattle of roots. Break me, I want to whisper, while beside me immigrant children compare chipped glyphs in the flickering curvature. They have tasted a small dream and found it good. To worship the punishment is banal except when it demands antiphon, response. The eye that tends the campfire demands a siege, but I am answering the tremor in my hand with the smallest possible service my damaged vocal cords can muster. Sleep moves within us like another music I never clearly hear. My house is dark and tomorrow we separate the lambs from the ewes. I have even learned to take some pleasure in their crying. Perhaps no sin is greater than this severance. [End Page 35]

G. C. Waldrep

G. C. Waldrep’s most recent books are a long poem, Testament (BOA Editions, 2015), and a chapbook, Susquehanna(Omnidawn, 2013). With Joshua Corey he edited The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta, 2012). His new collection, feast gently, is forthcoming (Tupelo Press, 2018). He teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and serves as Editor-at-Large for the Kenyon Review.

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