A Clean Edge by Jeremy Allan Hawkins
A Clean Edge by Jeremy Allan Hawkins
A Clean Edge by Jeremy Allan Hawkins was selected by Richard Siken as the winner of the 2016 Chapbook Prize.
A Clean Edge by Jeremy Allan Hawkins
Foreword by Richard Siken
$10
Ships Fall 2017
To Ease Yourself
the first step in seeking forgiveness
requires there be a wilderness
how wild it must be will depend
on how long you have spent in the air
when you circle down
you will have only yourself to tame
the whole thorny stretch of it
with a pair of rubber boots & a fishing knife
acre after acre brought low as if
it shared your shame & bowed to it
a list of brambles scored across your shins
your hands a muddy map of the work
the work itself a map of the work
you always knew needed to be done
the swamp to be drained & leveled
the brush to be beaten back
until what’s left is a meadow
to which you are permitted to return
long enough to see it for what it is
the grass blowing dreamily to morning
a wilderness you have flattened to ease yourself
of its being without you & you wonder
should you have left it to waste
should you let it now grow back
before the second step of forgiveness
in which you must become a bear
Jeremy Allan Hawkins was born in New York City and raised in the Hudson Valley. He has been the recipient of a grant from the US Fulbright Program and a teaching fellowship from the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, and was also selected for the Best New Poets 2016 anthology. He is the author of A Clean Edge, selected by Richard Siken as the winner of the 2016 BOAAT Chapbook Prize. He lives in France.