Feb 13, 2011 | Bible Story, Cain, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 1, Victorian Sonnet
The rising white of a blister on my hand is my blood guilt, my token from the fall— this and the damned weeds that curse the land with stains from our black revolt—our cabal with the snake against heaven’s highest king. Now everything is taken by the thorn and...
Feb 13, 2011 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 2, Victorian Sonnet
This lazy traveler reclines with dirty feet and receives his food from unwashed hands. He sinks his teeth in questionable meat and questions not this whore with tangled strands crying to him as if he were a god! And the whole muddied mob calls him...
Feb 13, 2011 | Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 2, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
It’s no use to stoke the coals of my discontent with the damp leaves of weak desires. My prayers are not the incense in its swirling ascent; they are the sticky haze of the still-green brier’s blaze, and I am smothered in the smoke. I long still to be...
Feb 13, 2011 | Gus Stevens, Regret, Seasons, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet, Winter
By some unjust miracle I awoke again today. How? When the wasted days and hours accumulate like a grey cloak of soot-heavy snow; the sweet-sick malaise sticks and smothers me. Regret, my old friend, tucks me to sleep under these covers, while, minute-by-minute, the...
