junk

by Ryan Hilary

I notice in pretty restaurants,
Erotic games and children’s toys;
The flakes of my disease.

For I am often baroque with my verbiage,
Stacking too many too high,
Too little too low.

My pulse lives in words,
Though my spirits rise with wine,
Because I am weak and lack in wealth
Come from a quiet family,
And have not suffered enough.

Often before an altar of electric light,
Working upon plastic papyrus,
I wonder if I tug as hard at the seams of others
As I do my own.

When stung by their sadness,
When retching at their ruptures,
I touch bruises, or scrape
The inner rawness
Of women and men
Who I love from afar,
But detest in intimacy

Then alone in their pain;
I find I am a stranger to my own.

ς

Ryan Hilary  recently graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York. His cherished but impractical M.A. is in ethics and theodicy—defending divinity from accusations of malice. In other words, the problem of Evil, or more subtly put: making sense of suffering. These issues inform his writing. Although not a Christian, Ryan is sometimes honest. He was born in Belfast, raised in London, and put through the wringer in New York. He received his B.A. from Vassar College, despises writing about himself in the third person and thinks that if we take anything too seriously we shall all go mad.

This entry was posted on August 15, 2011 at 3:00 am and is filed under Junk 4: Summer 2011, Ryan Hilary with tags an altar of electric light, codependency, creative nonfiction, have not suffered enough, http://www.revolutionarytelevision.org/, Poems from the Bargain Bin, poetry, Ryan Hilary, the problem of Evil, Union Theological Seminary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.