By Richard Hamilton

on days I spent looking for man’s bronzed, ashy ankles.

In the dark, some­place to put my nose again. Godheads 

don’t wrench meat from hal­lowed jaws, or worse, lace

the turkey stuff­ing. I had had sense enough to know 

it wasn’t black or white. Red leaves fell about the matted 

clump of his hair. Gnarled root, in the interim, the Apache

we sur­mised, had been sum­mar­i­ly mowed down. 

The brûlée of black koi, upturned sun­flow­ers harangued

God.  

Tagging the cavity war left with bright seeds, Lucifer sprayed 

Ichiban, jock­straps, and leaven. 

RICHARD HAMILTON (he/they) was born in Eliz­a­beth, New Jersey, and raised in the Amer­i­can south. He is the author of Rest of US (Re-Center Press, 2021) and Dis­cor­dant (Autumn House Press, 2023). Hamil­ton earned an MFA in Poetry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alabama. He present­ly holds the 2023–2025 post-doc­tor­al cre­ative writing fel­low­ship at the Center for African Amer­i­can Poetry and Poetics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh. They are a con­trib­u­tor in Issue 21 of the Stonecoast Lit­er­ary Magazine.

This poem orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 21. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.

Photo by Nikhil Singh