Introducing...

Nick Flynn, whose new play, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins, debuts in print today, recently introduced poet Sasha West in the Fall 2007 issue of American Poet. While I am not crazy about its title, the following poem, I must say, gave me a churn. West is, I believe, as yet unpublished, but her manuscript, entitled Forge, is no doubt making the rounds. She teaches at the University of Houston. I am posting her work as a reminder; we are not the only poets and writers that need move us. Here goes:

Prayer: happiness is often characterized by muddy inaccuracies

Lord, lend me a muddled happiness. A muddied handkerchief
to blot my tears. Lord, make my mind the polaroid of the
snowy field, the static of a station gone dead till dawn. Lord,
let me be the sheet laid pristine on the just-bought bed. Lord,
let me be a piece of furniture with the tags still on, a meadow
never threatened by subdivision. Lord, let the orchid on my
desk bloom fuchsia, let the narcissus forced in my vegetable
drawer to bloom, bloom all winter. Feed stray cats, Lord, with
stray birds. Keep stray birds, Lord, safe from jaws. Let no harm
be done to those I love. Lord, let no one die alone in a trailer,
surrounded by newspapers they could no longer lift. Lord,
cleanse the blood of the man I love. Give me a mottled hap-
piness, a joy smashed by mortar, let joy be the tar that clings
to me. Lord, if the bird dies in flight, let the flight be swift
and fleet over a tundra or over a sea. When I bend, when I
bend to the sea, let the waves be cold. Lord, if our dogs must
die, let them die in Pittsburgh. Where we will carry their soft,
warm bodies to the labs. Where we will hold their corpses in
our arms like brides or offerings. Lord, send the saline solu-
tion through them. Be the electric shock that calls them back.
Return to each dog what filled them. Lord, be the Lazarus in
every thing. Let us be the bliss in the fields. Let be.