Seth Copeland
The Infant Jesus of Prague, Oklahoma
Lincoln County does not wait on you
to find it; you either will or you won’t,
just like the Czech families settled here,
but should Highway 62 push you in,
past the obligatory Sonic Drive-In,
the mural about the Kolache Festival,
the John Deere lot, you will find a church,
caretakers of a piece of the Holy Cross,
a sliver of manger, bone of St. Wenceslaus,
and a variant of a statue from Prague-
the town twanged to rhyme with vague-
blond baby crowned and purple-caped.
Can a holy thing be replicated? A miracle
perfectly copied, our earth into God? In
1952, when Meher Baba’s car crashed nearby,
no one asked if he broke his vow of silence.
A center bears his name here, this town a vast
world in a state between region and reason,
a town where nothing is as simple as a ballot
or a gun even when there is plenty of both.
Prague does not need you to understand this.
Pilgrimage complete, all that might be left
is the donut shop that sells fresh vdolky
and a plummet south, then pointed west,
Moccasin Trail Road, Jim Thorpe’s birthplace:
a white fence fronting a clearing and a stone,
one more place where the divine came to us.
to find it; you either will or you won’t,
just like the Czech families settled here,
but should Highway 62 push you in,
past the obligatory Sonic Drive-In,
the mural about the Kolache Festival,
the John Deere lot, you will find a church,
caretakers of a piece of the Holy Cross,
a sliver of manger, bone of St. Wenceslaus,
and a variant of a statue from Prague-
the town twanged to rhyme with vague-
blond baby crowned and purple-caped.
Can a holy thing be replicated? A miracle
perfectly copied, our earth into God? In
1952, when Meher Baba’s car crashed nearby,
no one asked if he broke his vow of silence.
A center bears his name here, this town a vast
world in a state between region and reason,
a town where nothing is as simple as a ballot
or a gun even when there is plenty of both.
Prague does not need you to understand this.
Pilgrimage complete, all that might be left
is the donut shop that sells fresh vdolky
and a plummet south, then pointed west,
Moccasin Trail Road, Jim Thorpe’s birthplace:
a white fence fronting a clearing and a stone,
one more place where the divine came to us.
three from The Surface World
Listen—I am inside a certificate of survival. Nothing can hurt me here–no full-throated clueless Q not God save for all his mysterious ways the horror to poor form. Something young is bleating from me again–old goat in a good late season. Studying cinnabar poisoning among 19th Century aristocracy, ancien rouges sheen. Outside, midwestern rain forest. The rabbits look gaunt. The Fourth was last week. Nothing good happened.
Finally something like the threat of an idea. Too long in an earlyhot summer where more ebbs from each to fewer–Pareto Dynamic Duo of interesting + times. Sappho’s most accusatory fragment: you burn me. If we can sleep through the ac’s necessary hunger and the cats entering a bright new world every 5:30 am perhaps I can make it to see the leaves fall. And you now away in a Potter’s field.
Demiurge smoking worship in Mme Shekhinah’s Cafe when I see you, alone on the edge of a planter, notebook full of that script only you can rebis, and the smell of smoked turkey leg is there in the sear and smoke grilling my eyes. Between us, twelve or so people coming & going by day in the darkness of their lives. Will we always be enough of ourselves when there’s no one else to see? Enough cloud out that this isn’t a scorch. Let’s go, friend, out into it till the streetlights slowly glow.
Finally something like the threat of an idea. Too long in an earlyhot summer where more ebbs from each to fewer–Pareto Dynamic Duo of interesting + times. Sappho’s most accusatory fragment: you burn me. If we can sleep through the ac’s necessary hunger and the cats entering a bright new world every 5:30 am perhaps I can make it to see the leaves fall. And you now away in a Potter’s field.
Demiurge smoking worship in Mme Shekhinah’s Cafe when I see you, alone on the edge of a planter, notebook full of that script only you can rebis, and the smell of smoked turkey leg is there in the sear and smoke grilling my eyes. Between us, twelve or so people coming & going by day in the darkness of their lives. Will we always be enough of ourselves when there’s no one else to see? Enough cloud out that this isn’t a scorch. Let’s go, friend, out into it till the streetlights slowly glow.
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Seth Copeland grew up in southwest Oklahoma. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, The Shore, Seneca Review, Poet Lore, and Thin Air Magazine, among others. Since 2016, he has edited petrichor, a digital archive of text and image. He is a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and co-host of the Tabi Po reading series and open mic in Milwaukee.
Seth Copeland grew up in southwest Oklahoma. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, The Shore, Seneca Review, Poet Lore, and Thin Air Magazine, among others. Since 2016, he has edited petrichor, a digital archive of text and image. He is a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and co-host of the Tabi Po reading series and open mic in Milwaukee.