Bohince, Paula

United States, (b. 1976)

Prayer

  1. Adore me, Lord,
  2. beneath this raw milk sky, your vision
  3. of silvery cream comprising daylight.
  4. I’ve kept our appointment
  5. in the barn, board after board of pine
  6. hewn by us,
  7. sit beside the pig we chose
  8. for his mildness
  9. who smiles, now, in his waste.
  10. I abide by the chickadee
  11. who stutters in, a little obsessed
  12. with the mirrored chimes, her baffled image.
  13. Our saddles, oiled on thick nails,
  14. gleam from the walls like 3-D portraits.
  15. Something must be wrong
  16. or else you would answer—
  17. my father in heaven who speaks to me
  18. when no one else will speak to me.

© Paula Bohince. Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods. Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books (2008).

About the Poet:

Paula Bohince, United States, (b. 1976), is a poet and educator. Bohince is the author of three poetry collections, all from Sarabande: Swallows and Waves (January 2016), The Children (2012), and Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods (2008).

Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Granta, POETRY, The TLS, The Irish Times, Australian Book Review, and elsewhere. She has received the Second Prize in the UK National Poetry Competition for her poem “Among Barmaids,” and most recently, she was the 2020 John Montague International Poetry Fellow at University College Cork in Ireland.

Bohince has taught at New York University, the New School, The Poetry School, and elsewhere. She lives in Pennsylvania. [DES-01/22]

Additional information:

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