This installment of the PEN Poetry Series, selected by Ben Mirov, features a new poem from Joseph Lease, author most recently of Testify (Coffee House Press, 2011).

 

The Garden of Earthly Delights

 

                    Your
                           Kisses
                    Your
                           Sky
                    Your
                           Darkness
                    Your
                           Sky

 

                           *

 

                           —no—

                    paint
                           angel—

                    flesh—

                    paint
                           angel—

 

                           *

 

I’m high, I’m steam, I’m words like sky—America, you can’t be greed; America, you’re only greed; America, one extra summer night—nothing ends, see you later, nothing ends, tell me sky: you love to blue, I love to blue, a bowl of snow, a bowl of snow: morphine’s best:

 

                           *

 

                    so
                           willows

                    so
                           lost

 

                           *

 

Yelling at the building, yelling at the secret, yelling after midnight: try this: property is death: they had a body crammed in a mailbox and it was just a brown suit with bones sticking out: dirty, clean, kindness, longing: write the night—sound gives life—death’s sound too—keep listening, listen: before you broke me I thought I was free: sinful and free—

 

                           *

 

                    it’s so
                    raw
                    you like
                    that raw
                    still
                    still
                    burning
                    past
                    what it
                    says
                    try
                    try
                    again

 

                           *

 

Blue sound, blue vision, skyscrapers, empty tombs: nothing ends, see you later; sound and vision, broken rooms: mist, ropes of wind: end of the night, watery greens, blue winter night, thirty years gone—end of the night, watery greens, blue winter night—give me the round

                                                                sky to

                                                                suck—

 

                           *

 

                    so
                           willows

                    so
                           lost

                    so
                           open

                    so
                           long

 

                           *

 

                    Your
                           Kisses
                    Your
                           Sky
                    Your
                           Darkness
                    Your
                           Sky

 

Once a week, the PEN Poetry Series publishes new work by emerging and established writers from coast to coast. Subscribe to the Poetry Series mailing list and have poems delivered to your e-mail as soon as they are published (no spam, no news, just poems). We hope you like the pieces we find as much as we do, and pass them on.