Garth Greenwell

a mirror the size of a coin, placed
to catch the strongest cast of the sun

is not the sun, however certainly it seems it, so
what rises in you -- as though

toward what has crafted it, what, having crafted, has
called -- toward what you persist

in thinking of as God is not
God, is, rather, pride, and, as pride,

as distant from what has longed you
as is this light that warms us

only so much as we can stand
from what first birthed it, what, striking, would --

as practiced hands de-vein the prone, split
bodies of shrimp -- unshadow us, un-

psalm.

Garth Greenwell is a University Fellow in the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Comstock Review, and InPosse Review, and were awarded the 2000 Grolier Poetry Prize and the 2001 Rella Lossy Poetry Award. His chapbook, Crossing, is forthcoming from San Francisco State University Press.
 
 
 
 

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