72 Prayer poems

There was the method of kneeling, a fine method, if you lived in a country where stones were smooth. The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards, hidden corners where knee fit rock. Their prayers were weathered rib bones, small calcium words uttered in sequence, as if this shedding of syllables could somehow fuse them to the sky. There were the men who had been shepherds so long they walked like sheep. Under the olive trees, they raised their arms— Hear us! We have pain on earth! We have so much pain there is no place to store it! But the olives bobbed peacefully in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme. At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese, and were happy in spite of the pain, because there was also happiness. Some prized the pilgrimage, wrapping themselves in new white linen to ride buses across miles of vacant sand. When they arrived at Mecca they would circle the holy places, on foot, many times, they would bend to kiss the earth and return, their lean faces housing mystery. While for certain cousins and grandmothers the pilgrimage occurred daily, lugging water from the spring or balancing the baskets of grapes. These were the ones present at births, humming quietly to perspiring mothers. The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses, forgetting how easily children soil clothes. There were those who didn’t care about praying. The young ones. The ones who had been to America. They told the old ones, you are wasting your time. Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones. They prayed for Allah to mend their brains, for the twig, the round moon, to speak suddenly in a commanding tone. And occasionally there would be one who did none of this, the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool, who beat everyone at dominoes, insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats, and was famous for his laugh.

all you have to do is show yourself in case you hear us we are so small and fenceless in the shade throw us a hook when you can touch the scribbled child in the inferno all you have to do is show yourself a little pin your dark olive green parts against the boulder

Holy father I can’t pretend I’m not afraid to see you again but I’ll say that when the time comes I believe my courage will expand like a sponge cowboy in water. My earth- father was far braver than me — coming to America he knew no English save Rolling Stones lyrics and how to say thanks God

Let the blood if your belly must have it, but let it not be of me and mine. Let my momma sleep. Let her pray. Let them eat. Let the reverend’s devil pass over me. Let the odds at least acknowledge us. Let the breasts be intact, the insulin faithfully not far, and let the deep red pinpoint puddle its urgency on a pricked fingertip. Let the nurse find the vein the first time. Let the kerosene flow and let my grandma praise her bedside lord for letting her miss another winter. Let me be just a little bit bitter so I remember: Your columns and borders aint but the fractured, the broke clean, the brownest gouges in the blades of our great-great-great-shoulders. Let me leave and come back when my chest opens for you wider than your ditches did to engorge my placeless body. The mosquito-thick breath in your throat coats my skin and it almost feels as if you love me. Let the AC drown out the TV. Let the lotion bottle keep a secret corner til Friday. Let Ike, Wan, D-Block, all my brother’s brothers ride through the weekend. Let the cop car swerve its nose into night and not see none of them. Let us smell rain. Let the breeze through an oak hymn the promise that keeps us waking. Let the cicada unwind while hushpuppy steam slips out the knot of a tourist’s hand, and let him hear in it legends of how hot grease kept the hounds and the lash at bay.

(at St. Mary's) may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back     may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that

& as you bow your heads to pray /      pray a silent prayer around a chicken who lies motionless before your hungry eyes /     dead dead as your dreams /      as your hopes / dead as that silent prayer that dies more & more each day / that no ears will ever share that that dead chicken      / which you in your shame dare to call a turkey will never hear not that god /    lost in the heavens eating real turkey who to you now pray for blessings will never hear / i wish you a happy thanksgiving. & as you bow your heads to pray /      pray a silent prayer for the little boy who dances in the snow / barefooted he loves to greet new falling snow & has no shoes & hopes that santa on christmas eve will slide down the chimney of his tenement slum & in his stockings which he has hung by the fire escape / o so carefully as not to tear them any more will find them filled with little hopes & tiny dreams & beneath that narrow leaf       / which he in his shame dares call a tree / a christmas tree santa will leave toys of wooden soldiers & plastic dolls filled with love for him and his ( & does not know that santa nods on roofs & climbs on fire escapes & snatches pocket-books / & leaves no wooden soldiers or plastic dolls filled with love for him & his beneath his narrow leaf) / i wish him a merry christmas. & as you bow your heads to pray /      pray please pray a silent prayer for the poor old woman who sits by the stove / to keep warm as she looks out her window / watching the falling snow & for the numbers' man / she waits       / waits silently for steam to rush through rusty pipes / for santa to stop his nodding for you to stop your prayer /      open your eyes & boooooooo away the mouse that nibbles on your chicken ( there are too many prayers that need be prayed for all/     all to be done at just one meal) & waits /       she silendy waits for god to hear your prayers / after dinner / / i wish her a happy new year.

Give us water and food to pursue our tasks. Help us not become wards of the state, impoverished, homeless, destitute, crushed under the heel, buried in systems, imprisoned, dead, hospitalized. We die die die. Our dogs will not walk themselves after we go. Our bodies will not burn themselves after we go. Our apartments will not pack themselves after we die. Instead, bright ribbons of work, tangled in our bodies, will be vomited out and indeed bright ribbons will be vomited out. In the meantime, the light’s eyelashes open and close. And in the meantime, work and reprieve. Lie down; don’t lie; lie flat; lie still. See these books bound in itching white leather? They are your life. And each feathery page, lifted by hot wind. O summer air, o gardens, o seasons ô châteaux. The glaring day, it binds, o occurrence, o soil o soul.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread: you put this rather beautifully, and gave me leave to sing my work until my work became the song. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it: a line on which a man might ring the changes as he tills the ground from which he was taken. Thistle, thorn (in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed), these too shall it bring forth to thee, all the days of thy life till the end, the synagogue of the ear of corn. Poem and plowman cleave the dark. One can't eat art. But dust is art, and unto dust shall I return. O let my song become my work.

I pray for my daughter every single night even when we aren't speaking especially then i don't know if it reaches her but it reaches somewhere and i keep sending it

every evening i say the same words i've said my whole life they don't need to be new to be true old words old comfort still working