Kenosis
BY MICHAEL MLEKODAY
Olives and old churches
are best hollow. I admire their blackness,
but water wells overcome with ivy
are more my style. Most nights, I see
buckets with holes in the bottom.
I see fruit rinds littering orchards
and I think about meditation. If self-emptying
is what the heavens want from us,
I doubt I would have come
with a sleepwalker prepackaged
inside me. Then again there's thunder.
If I could unload like that--
Olives and old churches
are best hollow. I admire their blackness,
but water wells overcome with ivy
are more my style. Most nights, I see
buckets with holes in the bottom.
I see fruit rinds littering orchards
and I think about meditation. If self-emptying
is what the heavens want from us,
I doubt I would have come
with a sleepwalker prepackaged
inside me. Then again there's thunder.
If I could unload like that--
MICHAEL MLEKODAY is a St. Paul native whose poetry is forthcoming in Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics and Monkeybicycle. He has won the National Poetry Slam as both a poet (2009) and coach (2010), and he teaches at Kansas State University. His dietary habits can best be described as vegan+sushi.