We are Starved

By Joshua Kryah

"Joshua Kryah is redefining what it means to write spiritual poetry. This is not another book about longings for the spiritual; this is a book of offerings to the spiritual. These poems answer the plea of Yeats's spirits ('We are starved') and give them what they crave, depicting the particulars of human appetite and the way each 'peculiar and appalling hunger' unfolds. The scope of these poems is dizzying; they echo and glitter and sear as they, against all odds, give us a'world [that] is/suddener than any idea about the world.' We Are Starved is unabashed and unflinching, and it is deeply, exquisitely satisfying."
-Mary Szybist, author of Granted
Mountain West Poetry Series
Published by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Release date: Jun 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781885635228

Book preview

WE ARE STARVED

The Mountain West Poetry Series

Stephanie G’Schwind & Donald Revell, series editors

WE ARE STARVED

POEMS

Joshua Kryah

The Center for Literary Publishing

Colorado State University

Copyright © 2011 by Joshua Kryah.

All rights reserved.

For information about permission to reproduce

selections from this book, write to

Permissions, Center for Literary Publishing,

9105 Campus Delivery, Department of English,

Colorado State University,

Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-9105.

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kryah, Joshua.

We are starved : poems / Joshua Kryah.

p. cm. -- (Mountain west poetry series)

ISBN 978-1-885635-17-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

I. Title. II. Series.

PS3611.R885W4 2011

811’.6--dc22

2011012180

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

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Publication of this book was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

for my family, all of us

Violante

In the pantry

Gnawing at a mutton bone,

How she gnawed it,

How she clawed it,

When she felt herself alone.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

CONTENTS

The Poor Know They Are Poor

We Are Starved

It Survives, a Way of Harming, Your Mouth

Sallied Forth

The Least Child

We Will Be Fed Upon, We Will Be Fed

Languor, Succor, Ardor

The Body-Hole

Ghostmeat

Therefore That He May Raise, the Lord Throws Down

The Body in Its Final Commerce

Playlist of the Same

Love Like unto Whited Sepulchres

Chanticleer

Noli Me Tangere

This Plenty, This Never Enough

Cheapside

A Paradise

Miracle of the Drowned

Corpus Christi Carol

Many Are the Ruined Cathedrals of the Heart

That Man to Man Is an Arrant Wolfe

From the Gospel of the Foundering

Thinking One Place Could Not Two Bodies Bear

The Day Without Before This Without

Darkling

An Attraction to Distance and Disappearance

Poor Dogsbody, Poor Dogsbody’s Body

I Had Not Brought You into the World for Love for Naught

Things Fast Toward Their Absent Forms

Homecoming

Centaur

Nobody Is Ever Missing

And Naught I Have and All the World I Seize Upon

We