Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday.

BLIND FAITH

I seek to know you
through the waving oars
that sweettalk the river

each man carrying
the reverse side of ecstasy

they soaked it wrapped it
razed it
the black suite’s epidermis

behind mountain ash
naiads rally

a sax subtracted itself
from a bandstand
they wailed the world anew

soarers on webstone
is our blood too plain-spoken

without an ear
a shift of angle
at every step of the weird way

while you skin the truth
and sideline a gadfly

gloriole-
don’t streamline my slush
this is not a location shot

nearly halfway through
the tonic of your night

shit faster
said the caretaker

all around us
the honky-tonk of twilight

here’s yours: woodsplitters
here’s his: codeswitchers

Uche Nduka, poet and essayist, is the author of 13 volumes of poems of which the latest are Fretwire (Griots Lounge, 2022) and Scissorwork (Roof Books, 2022). A new volume of poems titled Bainbridge Island Notebook (Roof Books) is forthcoming in Fall 2023. A NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Poetry, his poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Denver Review, ThreeFold, Hyperallergic, NYC From The Inside (Anthology), Brooklyn Poets (Anthology) and in numerous print and online journals. Nduka’s writing has been translated into Italian, German, Finnish, Arabic, Turkish, Romanian, and Dutch. He presently teaches poetry, creative writing, and literature at the New School-Eugene Lang and Queens College (CUNY) in New York City.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx