Derek Gromadzki
from Pilgrimage Suites
In kind not kindness we truckle
barely as far as faded up from sleepless nods fortnights of present
pass and we under wych elms at the rim of limits recall
an incoherence not before or since
seen came sat with longing went
for wilds of jackdaw feathers
hoar harrow lines and trees that command their costs
from beggared minds
grudged to flight the first to stutter
unlettered and speak among mutes
eldritch a word curls into a word curls
and clinks dying the angelus choirs
defer a milder levin to meridians
propped on mattocks and picks
we change our throats from supplication
lay our pleas astray
and fasten our legs
with leather and refugee blessings
wound from tartary lisle
unwinding by short suddens
between itinerant limps and convictions
quit outstretched in the mud
and in our mudded paces where we huddle
arrears in residence where we reside
dialed on desolate silhouettes
toward all our going and some feelings felt like vertigo
plotted on strokes of drystone fences low wicket
gates around our knees where skirlings lour
and wait for hours to seize
the yawns of unfilled cisterns and unsettle the settled lichen
on the wet latches that we tremble to catch
to finish so little in leaving and having left
stayed ordinary after weathered descents
ascend our faces
and a languor arrests
our furtherance for
Derek Gromadzki is the author of Pilgrimage Suites, forthcoming this fall from Free Verse Editions, and, with Forrest Gander, he is co-editor of Alice, Iris, Red Horse: Selected Poems of Gozo Yoshimasu, also forthcoming this fall from New Directions. His work has appeared in publications such as Black Warrior Review, BOAAT, Boston Review, Conjunctions, and Witness. He is currently a PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Iowa.