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This week’s featured poem from Slate is entitled Creation Myth and is written by Josh Kalscheur. As always, I’d like to encourage you to click the poem title and listen to Josh Kalscheur read his work aloud. Maybe you’re at home with lots of snow piled outside, or perhaps you’re stuck at work with lots of snow piled up outside. Either way, a little poetry always brightens your day. So check it out!
According to his page at Blackbird, Josh Kalscheur has had his work published in various outlets, such as Boston Review, Ninth Letter,Witness, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Cincinnati Review. He teaches English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. According to his bio at the Sycamore Review, he also served as the Poetry Editor for Devil’s Lake, a journal of poetry and prose.
Creation Myth, by Josh Kalscheur
A woman calling herself God
hangs in heaven.
From the light she grips
she cuts three boys, three sharp-rocked
beginnings. She wraps the reef around them,
she holds the water until they begin to grow
their shores. Birds from her hands
find what is sweet is not always
alive. From her sky
ribbed clouds go nowhere
the boys think. She becomes a shadow
when they want darkness. She becomes
a residue of heat they clean
from their breadfruit trees. It is sad, she knows,
but good, to want them scattered,
secluded, these incidents of light.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s poem from Slate. Stay tuned next week for another!
– Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan
