Pilgrim Condition
All I needed was a rain animal,
one that wouldn’t disappear
until I begged or burned enough
to learn that flesh is made for vanishing
our fever teeth. When the surf was asleep,
I hunted coquinas & never told anyone
I needed them, my lies maybe even
lovely. What I mean is everything
collides sometimes, that I could have clawed
the water from those spiderwebs, the way
they drank the cold, but I was absorbed
by the smallness of their eyes, scytodidae
dappled, pearls about to burst.
Daughters of Felicitas & Dymphna
always save me from the sword,
the cemetery of myself—
but I can hear the hunger of coyotes,
& you don’t want to listen to me
talk about the body anymore.
Chad Foret is a recent graduate of the PhD Creative Writing program at The University of Southern Mississippi, where he edited the Graduate School magazine Arete and taught composition, literature, and creative writing. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Tupelo Quarterly, Spoon River Poetry Review, Nashville Review, Barely South, as well as other journals and anthologies.
