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Writer's pictureA Too Powerful Word

Marlon Fick


Marlon Fick (1960) is a novelist, poet, translator, short story writer. Education: BA, University of Kansas; MA, New York University; Ph.D. (1992), University of Kansas

Awards: Fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry; the ConaCulta (Mexico); Ramon Llul Award for Literature (Catalonia); Best American Literary Translator (Latitudes Foundation) for The River is Wide: 20 Mexican Poets (UNM Press, 2005).

Publications: A few books of poetry, short fiction, novel, and translations. Among them are his latest novel, The Nowhere Man (Jaded Ibis Press, 2015), and an edition/translation of Catalan poets, XEIXA: 14 Catalan Poets (forthcoming Tupelo Press, 2018).

He works as an Associate Professor and Chair of Literature and Languages at the University of Texas, Permian Basin.




In Such a Time As This

In such a time as this,

when I am called upon to speak

I search for myself with my hands, but I am missing.

In such a time as this,

with sigils on the door in blood

we huddle and pray

that the dark between death and resurrection

be as the empty spaces in an ordinary day.

The world we lived in, I knew by heart.

Every scent. Every tree.

I could feel the wheat fields swaying inside.

I would crawl onto the roof and look over the valley

at the vineyards

and I stretched out

and it was well with my soul.

I was sick for losing this.

In such a time

when a beast gaslights the old into thinking their gardens are useless,

and dupes children to preparing the way…

and their parents, who, dumb from the light shining off the spread of his feathers,

stand in ignorant adoration.

In this sad hour we are summoned to speak,

may we be equal to the occasion, to all

may we be equal,

may we be

and

may the waves pass over. The grass, amber in twilight.

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