Poem Ending in the Title of a Frank Bidart Poem
This hymn falls heavy on my flesh. Primal. Blinding.
Light-of-light—dense enough to crush all things visible
and invisible. Each particle surrounding.
Each atom within.
I’ve sighed & heaped thick hopes upon you.
How their skins graced your neck—hanging
like millstones. See how you shrugged.
Sloughed them off so easily. See now
how the desire to be ground fine
like dust resounds. Fervent.
A supplication for release—
and I’m met
by the force
of this
Song
of the
Mortar
and
Pestle.
Kari Ann Ebert is the Poetry & Interview editor for The Broadkill Review and the Project Director of Downtown Dover Poetry Weekend. Winner of the 2020 Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry, the 2019 Crossroads Ekphrastic Writing Contest, and 2018 Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest, Kari’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Mojave River Review, Philadelphia Stories, Main Street Rag, The Ekphrastic Review, and Gargoyle as well as several anthologies. She has been awarded fellowships from Delaware Division of the Arts (2020), The Shipman Agency (2020), BOAAT Press (2020), and Brooklyn Poets (2019). Though she spent her formative years in Tennessee, she lives and writes in Dover, Delaware.