No thing
by PATRICK REARDON
One-Cent specialized in the
silence between the words.
Hear no thing and every thing.
He stacked the bricks of unlogic.
Stacked the sewer bricks. Stacked
lust bricks and bricks of despair,
the bricks below the skin.
Get thee behind. Get thee to.
Get thee over and out.
One-Cent drank strangeness.
A weaver’s daughter, the Governor’s
tall daughter, child of music.
What God has begun, has breathed,
has cut. The easy yoke, the lost goat,
the water.
Incense the doubt. Holy water the
emptiness. Bread and wine the hunger.
I saw incarnation at the DMV.
Patrick T. Reardon, a Chicago Tribune reporter from 1976 to 2009, is the author of seven poetry collections. His latest, Every Marred Thing: A Time in America, was the winner of the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans (Lavender Ink). He is a six-time nominee in poetry for a Pushcart Prize. His poetry has appeared in America, RHINO, Commonweal, Long Poem, After Hours, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal, and other journals.