WITH HOW TO ADDRESS YOU LORD

 
 

With what     the question is

 

The question is with what Lord to address You Lord

 

The question is with how

 

 

 

Lord to address You Lord / Or it     the question is it’s easy to     / Answer and people do

 

And have and Lord I do dear

 

You     / But living under

 

 

 

money Lord the words feel each word feels

 

The instant I    say it feels bought     or feels each

 

Lord     / Before I’ve said it bought     / And writing I say

 

 

 

writing even this I said before I wrote it down

 

And said in an     / Empty room feels like money wasted

 

The question is not who

 

 

 

reads     but by whom     for what

 

addressing You Lord

 

am I asking to be bought

 

 

 
 

THE MORE WITH MORE VIOLENCE I STRIKE THE WATER

 

 

The farther Lord away

 

I drift the more     / I drift and break

 

up and the more I drift / And break

 

 

 

up Lord the farther

 

Away I drift the more with more

 

Violence I strike the water

 

 

 

Lord     the oars splinter

 

The more with more

 

violence I strike the water / The more

 

 

 

my arms ache weaken and

 

The more exhausted I become

 

The farther out I’m dragged

 

 

 

Lord and the farther out I’m dragged

 

the / Less I hope    ever to return

 

The less I hope     ever to return / The less

 

 

 

clearly I see Your hand

 

in the making of the tide

 

my God the God

 

 

 

also of the tide

 

for which     / Dragging me out is incidental

 

to its constant act of worship
 
 
—-
 
 
Shane McCrae is the author of Mule, Blood, Forgiveness Forgiveness, and three chapbooks–most recently, Nonfiction. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming, in The Best American Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Fence, LIT, Pleiades, and elsewhere, and he has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and a fellowship from the NEA. He teaches in the brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University.