Moe Lionel, On Prayer

“Remember how magic works,” Moe Lionel pleads as much to himself as to the reader, navigating death, race, memory, sexuality and violence.  What else can we do in the face of terrible loss, the inevitability and omnipresence of death? The prayer of this poem is memory of the possibility of hope.

An excerpt:

does your body feel it?

bug bitten and burned

you're not made to be outside the mind

you're made to breathe through this container

you're made to breathe though blessed be,

            be still

you're made to breathe though

            you're not so awful

you're made to breathe past survival

you're made to breathe beautiful

MOE LIONEL is a Minneapolis-based poet, fiction writer and performer whose work focuses on the intersections between genealogies, disease, trauma, (queer) families, and the body. He has received grants from Intermedia Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board for his short story collection What Was In Fact. He yearns for and in moments, finds hope for a world where it is a little bit easier to breathe. Reach him at moe.lionel.moe@gmail.com. On Prayer is for Gabrielle and Kyle.