Every Morning Prayer

By Jeffrey Skinner / Issue 9

A delivery man drops a

Poorly wrapped package on our stoop

Another thing to put among

The many I keep,

Whispering—

What now, pig? Lord knows

There’s no need, & then however open

To let fantastic evil—a gorgeous writhing

Leap from the box.

Therefore I require

New raiment daily, Lord—

Sewn in kind,

Sufficient unto the day,

This day, sky-

Blue corners rounded off,

Brothers & sisters

Dying, right & left—O sufficient

Unto this day.

I am awake

Partially

My trouble out there

Waiting for me

The hat you gave me

The only one that ever fit

Jaunty on my woe-swollen head. So what

Now, Lord? I don’t know. Let’s go.

JEFFREY SKINNER’s seventh full collection of poetry, Chance Divine, won last year’s Field Prize, and has just been published by Oberlin College Press. His I Offer This Container: New & Selected Poems, is also just out, from Salmon Poetry. He is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and a recent winner of a literature award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.