Brett Eugene Ralph, “Emaciated Buddha”

Scarcely do we see him
lost in all his wandering,
dollop of cold rice in a dirty palm,
whatever slumber he can muster
hard won from snakes and rocks and seething rain,
the febrile congress of frogs, the unseen
unrest of insect worlds, the wind-
begotten complaints of the hunted, the haunted
creatures perishing in the dark.

Like Christ in Grünewald’s triptych,
he looks like a man who’s truly spent
a lifetime nailed to a shadeless tree:
skinny arms like tired entreaties,
face like a cave, each protruded rib
a distinct refusal, once and future
beauty of the body discarded
like a murky early draft.

A few months after Black Sabbatical was published last year, Brett Eugene Ralph spoke about the collection at Murray State University:

There’s also a ten-minute video of Ralph reading some poems at the inKY Reading Series in Louisville, Kentucky. Or you could watch him singing “Grandpa Was a Hobo” or “Charcoal Gray” with his band, Kentucky Chrome Revue.

12 April 2010 | poetry |