This week in the PEN Poetry Series, PEN America features an excerpt from a poem by Graham Hunter Gregg.

from KINGED

one
stab
lowers
itself
into
the
body

i buy wounds
i own yours

       •
 

a red comet
sprayed the wrecked wall
they made me wash it
my mother said
wash your hands
for dinner
my teacher was killed today
i wash my hands
the moon lights a cigarette
in resignation

        •
 

i have been a murderer
since i was eight
i have not saved anyone
since i was twelve
experience is hard
to explain
bodies around me
are drowning
are not
are you
dying a little

       •
 

grass cooling my temples
i thought of miklos
how all i wanted was to
hold miklos
bodies on top of
bodies he wanted
to smile at and in
death with what
little warmth you
have left please
hold miklos

       •
 

you tell me 
that i am only 
one person
why
some small person
please tear up
this body with hands

       •
 

a night before
we lost our gods
we put a candle
in the wall
but nothing lit
the last success
the way fire says fear
the way it says human
in the morning
we will stand as bodies

       •
 

this is a daymare
a dead meadow
full of its name
i find myself
closing eyes
buttoning coats
bandaging children
finding
replacing
limbs
re-membering
i don’t know why
i turn them
all over
we face the sun

       •
 

i want to beat you
into you
with you
into i am there
to carve my place inside
of you
to rest
inside the hollow
i have made
big ugly and safe
i am the ambulance’s
afterthought
the forgetful emergency
you were the kind that collapses
crushing the flit of yellow
you are my one
slow black 

       •
 

s’il vous plait
we are this whiting out
this something French in italics
this painting is a de Kooning
this museum is dying in tongues
in this elongated please
before you can find this
i ghost

 

Once a week, the PEN Poetry Series publishes work by emerging and established writers from coast to coast. Subscribe to the PEN Poetry Series mailing list and have poems delivered to your e-mail as soon as they are published (no spam, no news, just poems).