Mark McKain
Summer 2025 | Poetry
With
a restless wish to praise whatever
emerges and becomes a body, an excess,
a spark, a wrinkled snout, a mistake.
With the dragon’s teeth you, like Cadmus,
carefully sow in the soft earth,
layered and folded, you the well-bedded
survivor of fault and rift,
waiting for a song from that silent
yellow-throated warbler—window strike—
waiting for a word that chooses you, thankful
none of your thoughts
ever need be finished—
Mark McKain’s poetry and visual art have appeared in Agni, The Journal, Subtropics, Blue Mesa Review, Superstition Review, Western Humanities Review, ISLE, Gulf Stream Magazine, and elsewhere. His second poetry chapbook Blue Sun was published by Aldrich Press. He writes, teaches and experiences global warming in St Petersburg, Florida.