Devin Kelly earned his M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., and co-hosts the Dead Rabbits Reading Series in New York City. He is the author of the books Blood on Blood (Unknown Press) and In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen (forthcoming 2017, CCM Press).
In the beginning my beginning hummed
with the sound of a thousand other beginnings.
Now, when I say light, I stare away from sun
& into your body. If I am to be in possession
of anything, I want it to be my state of witness.
How difficult to see the consanguinity of rivers,
one leading toward one, the air the blown kiss
swims & the kiss itself, its fist & fever.
We are born of word & the word travels.
You hear it at night, the train’s rattling moan,
dust’s physicality, a country of mothers unraveling