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

 

Sky of One Planet

 

Never say die

              in a beggar world

         Advance as all unpaid accounts

                           become equal

At night elephant sleeps

                 between bar stools

Hew to the sky

                      of one planet

          Come upon a place

                     where windows are doors

See a wall framed

                     in stateless flags

After independence

           rebirth of the spirits

                 leads astray

Horns blow for the locksmith

 

Temperate rain in the lobby

Ascension is awkward –

             unfold and weigh

           the odds

Surrender survives the gamble

A pox in time

         A third of the saints

              piss away

Everything useless at hand

                 loves escape

 

The ladder is rolled up

             from above

Feel the mask melt into

         my face and trust

a blue I feel with eyes closed

            aimed toward the heat

A gold dust baked

        in a white linen pouch

 

                                                                                      01X123

 

John Godfrey was born in Massena, N.Y. in 1945. While at Princeton on a full needs-based scholarship he began writing poems and in 1965 became acquainted with the New York poets of the 50s and early 60s era. He was first published in MOTHER in 1968 and the same year in The Paris Review. Since then he has published many collections, most recently The City Keeps: Selected and New Poems 1966-2014 (Wave, 2016) and A Torch for Orphans (Cuneiform Press, 2020). In October 2024 Station Hill Press will publish Prettier Grit. He has never applied for a grant but along the way received fellowships from the General Electric Foundation and from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 1994 he took a B.S. in Nursing from Columbia University and worked nine years as a visiting nurse in maternal/pediatric HIV/AIDS and eight years as a nurse clinician in family, adolescent and gestational/newborn HIV/AIDS at Kings County Hospital Center. He retired in 2011. He has lived in Manhattan’s East Village since the late 60s.

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