POETRY
Rosary
Rosary my cane.
Gospel the times.
Prudence my ailings,
wisdom, company and Lord-words.
Child the broken bread.
Child the leash.
Child the marrow in its concealment.
Seer said: He loved you.
He’s yours anytime.
Skin the discomfort.
Good the god.
Possible the god.
Prayerbook the common cold.
Crucifix the boils and pustules.
Simple the violent.
Misery the affluent.
Vocation the heavy-headed sunflower.
Seer said: He can come on
Mother’s Day, Father’s Day.
He can come in dreams, too.
Snow the city curb.
Cigarette the stone.
Possession the philosophy,
the schema, the fall, the climb,
the sums and divisions.
Bureaucrat the tree.
Usher the teaching.
Stained-glass the water and wine.
Seer said: Erma, don’t be sad.
When you go, you change younger
— not a baby.
Water and wine the shining brown pews
with kneelers and hat-brim snaps.
Hat-brim snap the noel.
Lamb of god the black stone.
Kyrie the gray river water.
Canticle the days.
Patrick T. Reardon was a Chicago Tribune reporter for 32 years. He has published six poetry collections, including Darkness on the Face of the Deep and Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems. His next collection Every Marred Thing: A Time in America, the winner of the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans, was published in April by Lavender Ink. He has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize.
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