God of Nothingness: Poems

By Mark Wunderlich

A magnificent book of hope and resolve written out of profound losses, by award-winning poet Mark Wunderlich

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jan 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781644451380

Mark Wunderlich

Mark Wunderlich is the author of The Anchorage, which won the 1999 Lambda Literary Award. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Book preview

I.

WUNDERLICH

The name means odd.

The name means queer.

It can denote an odd fish.

It suggests a queer chap.

Sometimes it means capricious. It can also mean peevish.

It’s a synonym for singular. It is thought to be poetic.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin was called ein wunderlicher Kauz,

with his colorful clothing come to pipe the rats away.

He drowned them in the Weser, or so the stories go.

When the mayor withheld payment

he took the children and drowned them with the rats,

or perhaps they went into the mountains,

or they moved to Transylvania.

It is one-hundred years since our children left,

says the crumbling book found in the church—

that is what it means to be a Wunderlich.

The name means strange things happened to him.

It means he can be disputatious.

It means he sometimes wears peculiar garments to a