David J. Daniels
This Is My Case for Beauty
The message was to take seriously everything you’ve got and the messenger
shaking his gun implied that everything ought to mean more than whatever
little I had at the time, which were keys and coins buried deep in one pocket
I suddenly felt the glimmer of, like the starfish I’d stashed in my bathing suit
as a joke once, for my brother, as if much like I long thought a lover might
the messenger had been waiting to carry me on to that other side of devotion.
This Is My Case for Terror
He’d given up liquor and meth for Christ but struggled still with the body
so found himself often perplexed with himself at closing time in a corner
while the bartenders wiped and one queen dished out royal hell to another
and in that crude light scanned the rubbish for one white trick to fasten to
and that no matter what he’d convinced himself of Christ shunning flesh
it was flesh he’d come to understand would be his ruin.
This Is My Case for Joy
He claimed only once to have suffered pride having overcome a silence
and conveyed himself nowhere always, from drag show to bar down an alley
at night with his one perplexing song of joy amid so much despair but now
found Christ, was on pills again, and had taken the hoe up in earnest
to resuscitate there in his father’s fields something he recalled from childhood
when the sun teetered over the corn rows at dusk and their violence started in.
David J. Daniels is the author of two collections: Breakfast in the Suburbs, a chapbook (Seven Kitchens Press, 2012); and Clean, winner of the Four Way Books Intro Prize (2014). He currently teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Denver.
Return to November 2012 Edition
The message was to take seriously everything you’ve got and the messenger
shaking his gun implied that everything ought to mean more than whatever
little I had at the time, which were keys and coins buried deep in one pocket
I suddenly felt the glimmer of, like the starfish I’d stashed in my bathing suit
as a joke once, for my brother, as if much like I long thought a lover might
the messenger had been waiting to carry me on to that other side of devotion.
This Is My Case for Terror
He’d given up liquor and meth for Christ but struggled still with the body
so found himself often perplexed with himself at closing time in a corner
while the bartenders wiped and one queen dished out royal hell to another
and in that crude light scanned the rubbish for one white trick to fasten to
and that no matter what he’d convinced himself of Christ shunning flesh
it was flesh he’d come to understand would be his ruin.
This Is My Case for Joy
He claimed only once to have suffered pride having overcome a silence
and conveyed himself nowhere always, from drag show to bar down an alley
at night with his one perplexing song of joy amid so much despair but now
found Christ, was on pills again, and had taken the hoe up in earnest
to resuscitate there in his father’s fields something he recalled from childhood
when the sun teetered over the corn rows at dusk and their violence started in.
David J. Daniels is the author of two collections: Breakfast in the Suburbs, a chapbook (Seven Kitchens Press, 2012); and Clean, winner of the Four Way Books Intro Prize (2014). He currently teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Denver.
Return to November 2012 Edition