Colin Pope: Testimonial
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Testimonial (Daily Bread)
On a clear day I can look up
and see every question I’ve ever muttered
to the sky.
The black specks of their wings
like some tidy god really designed them
to be answered.
Like what’s inside the sky
could crawl out of its all-devouring hole.
I tell you I was ready to be eaten that night I turned circles on the gravel
in the parking lot behind Moody Pond.
My girlfriend pregnant. Sister
in jail.
I went there to beg for a sign things
would be okay.
Not even good.
I didn’t dare for good.
Just a few years earlier, ugliness
poured into me
in great, rainbow-sheened gurgles,
and I couldn’t help but curse
anyone
who kept teenagers from being loved.
God and everyone else.
But that’s how it happens.
You keep tossing the crumbs
of yourself
into the water until nothing
even wants them,
until the water
lets you turn it into the bread
people eat
when nobody’s listening.
Colin Pope’s collection Why I Didn’t Go to Your Funeral (Tolsun Books) was a finalist for the Press 53 Award for Poetry and was released in 2019, and his manuscript Prayer Book for an American God was a finalist for the Louise Bogan Award, the St. Lawrence Award, the Unicorn Press First Book Competition, and others. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as Slate, Rattle, Third Coast, West Branch, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, and Best New Poets. He teaches at Oklahoma State University and works on the editorial staffs of Cimarron Review and Nimrod International.
