SPORK PRESS
sporklet 14

Carly Joy Miller


To Return to Desire, Return to Its Mouth

GodbruiseGodplum

Godspace:

You’ve held a blankness

in you you’ve kept

a crown for holiness

(what loiters, what delights).
The Lord’s gullet paved with echo: yet I:

I am not focused on the tower of language.

How hours bent.

The filth, slate-clean.

Darling, you are not hereyet. You have not

wintered your lover’s shadow,

suckling. How sweet

to fool yourself into vows.

Vow a little

deliciousness upon

me: I’ve flung my tongue toward love

most selfishly.

A bruise on a plum.


Carly Joy Miller is the author of Ceremonial (Orison Books, 2018), selected by Carl Phillips as the winner of the 2017 Orison Prize for Poetry, and the chapbook Like a Beast (Anhinga Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Rick Campbell Prize.